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SCHOOL BULLETIN PUBLICATIONS. 



This series of Books for Teachers began with the issue in 1875 of 
Common School Law for Common School Teachers. Within six years 
more than one hundred hooks were issued, with an aggregate sale 
exceeding three hundred thousand copies. That no teacher's library 
is fairly complete without at least several of these books is com- 
monly admitted, and the titles of some of the more important are 
hereto appended, those most recently published being in CAPITALS. 

Besides his own publications, the undersigned deals largely in all 
Teacher's Supplies. He makes a specialty of works on Pedagogy; in 
other words, of works intended for the use of Teachers, as distin- 
guished from Educational Text-Books. His catalogue of over 400 
such works will be sent for two three-cent stamps; and he will endeavor 
to fill promptly and cheaply orders for any American or English 
publications of this character. It is his intention to keep constantly 
in stock every reputable pedagogical book now published; and he 
also keeps close watch of auction sales, both in this country and 
abroad, in order to secure such works as are now "out of print," but 
which have present or historical value. Correspondence is solicited, 
and will receive attention. _ C. W. BARDEEN, Syracuse, N. Y. 



re< 
5T-4 



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To COV6 
10:) fed 
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400 feel 

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Checks. 



1RARY QF 




' an entirely 
b. W. Bar- 
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ited to give 



TED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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Per box_. 1 25 
SuppJrEWStijaiaujiy, lASi'-llUhurea,- xirar^xeriisyiiT cts; Cards. 
15 cts; Checks, 40 cts; Certificates, 50cts. 

Alclen (Joseph) First Principles of Political Economy. Cloth, 16 

mo. , pp. 153 _ 75 

Bradford (W. H.) The Thirty Possible Problems of Percentage. 
embracing a full and exhaustive discussion of the theory of 
General Percentage, with one hundred illustrative examples. 
Second edition, revised and enlarged. Flexible Cloth, 16mo., 
pp. 34 25 

Ceehe (Levi N.) First Steps among Figures. A Drill Book in the 
Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic, based upon the Grube Meth- 
od. Teachers Edition. Cloth, 16mo. , pp. 326 _ 1 00 

Pupil's Edition. Cloth, 16mo., pp. 143 _. 45 

Backhaul (Henry B.) HANDBOOKS FOR YOUNG TEACH- 
ERS. No 1, FIRST STEPS. Cloth, 24 mo., pp. 152 75 

No. 2. Lesson's and Discipline. In preparation. 



Barcleen (C. W.) Common School Law. A digest of statute and 
common law as to the relations of the Teacher to the Pupil, 
the Parent, and the District. With 400 references to legal 
decisions in 21 different states. To which are added the 
1400 questions given at the first seven New York Examina- 
tions for State Certificates. 7th thousand. Cloth, 12mo., pp. 
188 and Appendix _ 50 

Roderick IJume. The story of a New York Teacher. Cloth, 

16mo., pp. 295 _ 1 25 

Bulletin Blank Speller. Designed by Principal H. B. Buckham, 

Buffalo Normal School. Boards, 5fx7£, round corners, pp. 40 15 

Book- Keeping Blanks. Day-Book, Journal, Ledger, Cash Book, 

Sales Book. In sets or singly. Press board, 7x8£, pp. 28 15 

Composition Book. Designed by Principal H. B. Buckham, 

Buffalo Normal School. Manilla, 7x9, pp. 34 15 

Class Register. Designed by Edward Smith, Superintendent of 

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6x7, for terms of twenty weeks, (b) 5x7, for terms of fourteen 
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sent. Pp.48. _ .._ 25 

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Cooke (Sidney G.) Politics and Schools. Paper, 8vo., pp. 23 25 

Craig (Asa H.) The Question Book. A general review of Com- 
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text-books. Invaluable to teachers as a means of giving a 
Normal Training. 42d Thousand. Cloth, 12mo., pp. 340. ... 1 50 

De Graff (E. V.) PRACTICAL PHONICS. A comprehensive 
study of Pronunciation, forming a complete guide to the study 
of the elementary sounds of the English Language, and con- 
taining 3000 words of difficult pronunciation, with diacritical 
marks according to Webster's Dictionary. Cloth, 12mo., 
pp. 108 .- 75 

POCKET PRONUNCIATION BOOK, containing the 3000 

words of difficult pronunciation, with diacritical marks accord- 
ing to Webster's Dictionary. Manilla, 16mo., pp. 47 15 

Hie School Room Guide, embodying the instruction given by 

the author at Teachers' Institutes in New York and other 
States, and especially intended to assist Public School Teach- 
ers in the practical work of the school room. Tenth Edition, 
with many additions and corrections. Cloth, 12mo., pp. 449- . 1 -0 

The Song Budget. A collection of Songs and Music for schools 

and educational gatherings. Paper, small 4to., pp. 72 15 

The School-Room Chorus. A collection of 200 Songs, suitable 

for Public and Private Schools. Boards, small 4to., pp. 147.. 33 



SCHOOL BULLETIN PUBLICATIONS, 



HAND BOOKS 



FOR 



YOUNG TEACHERS. 

NUMBER I, FIRST STEPS. 



BY 



HENRY B, BUCKHAM, A. M., 

Principal State Normal School, Buffalo, N. Y. 



Teaching is a fine art, which like other fine arts so depends on a multitude o f 

details that the neglect of any one of them spoils the effect of the 

whole and robs even genius of half its power. 



Syracuse, N. Y. : -o\ ftx 

C. W. BARDEEN, PUBLISHER, 

1881. 



1>L 



- 



TO MY FATHER, 

who for most of a long life has been a teacher both 
in the pulpit and in the school-room, this volume is 
gratefully and affectionately inscribed by his son, 

THE AUTHOR. 



Copyright, 1880, by C. W. Bardeen 



PREFACE. 



The author began teaching in his sixteenth year, 
in a poor and scattered district of Oneida County. 
The school-house had been a milk-room for a dairy 
farm through the summer; the shelves for the milk- 
pans had been taken down, one shelf had been put 
round the room and in front of this a slab-seat had 
been set on stout legs ; a stove and one chair com- 
pleted both the furniture and apparatus of the room. 
For fuel there were brought to the door, as occasion 
required, loads of green wood of "sled-length;" for 
home, the teacher had the run of the district; for 
wages, six dollars per month of twenty-two days; 
for pupils, thirty boys and girls, presenting the 
usual variety of age, disposition and ability. 

It is needless to say that the outward conditions 
were not specially attractive, and that they were 
fully equal to the deserts of the teacher. He had 
never heard of a Normal School, or of any special 
training for teachers, and had never been told any- 
thing of methods or of management. All that he 
could claim to bring to his school was a sufficient 
book knowledge of the three R's, and an honest, if 
youthful, ambition to keep a good school. 

It is assumed that many now begin teaching in 
circumstances not essentially different, with at least 
equal ignorance of what to do and how to do it. 
This volume is written to aid the inexperience and 
to guide the uncertainty of the beginner, who is 
without special training. It is meant candidly to 



IV PREFACE. 

be what its title indicates. It is intended to give 
such instruction and suggestions as the author now 
sees would have been useful to him long ago, and 
which he hopes may now be useful to others. It is 
in no respect a book for the wise ; it is addressed to 
the unwise only. It makes no attempt to utter a 
philosophy of education, or to construct a code for 
the profession, or to start a new departure. It 
seems to the author that a host of young teachers 
are much more in need of the plainest and most 
direct precepts of doing what every school will 
surely need, than of philosophies and theories, im- 
portant as these are in their right place ; and he is 
abundantly content to be the one who "had rather 
speak five words with his understanding, that he 
might teach others also, than ten thousand words 
in an unknown tongue." 

If, then, this book is plain almost to homeliness, if 
it deals only with the little things every beginner- 
must meet and manage, if it aims only to make the 
old ways in which many will still walk both easier 
and more fruitful of good, instead of aiming to 
make a revolution in education, be it so ; the author 
has meant to take a short range and fire low. 

It has not seemed best to swell the bulk of the vol- 
ume by illustrations and anecdotes drawn from the 
author's experience or other source, but to confine 
it to the simple statement of what was to be said. 

Other numbers are in preparation and will be 
published as soon as may be, the next treating of 
recitations, records and management, H. B. B. 

Buffalo, N, ¥.. March, 1881, 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. 

Outfit fob Teachinci. Needed 10 

1. Knowledge of subjects 10 

(a) Of subjects to be taught 10 

(ft) Of collateral subjects 11 

(c) General information 12 

2. Knowledge of the children to be educated. 13 

(a) Of their physical being 15 

(b) Of their active and moral powers 15 

(c) Of their aesthetic sense : 16 

(d) Of their intellectual powers 16 

8. Knowledge how to adapt instruction 18 

4. Maturity -- 21 

5. Character 22 

6. Fitting disposition and temper 23 

7. Good physical health 25 

8. Determination to do thorough work 27 

Chapter II. 

General Plan of Work 29 

1. What education is 30 

2. Special province of school education 32 

(a) Intellectual training 33 

(b) Imparting of information . 35 

3. This province to be adhered to 36 

4. How these ends may be secured 37 

Chapter III. 

Particular Plan of Work 41 

1 . A definite ideal 41 

2. Choice of specific methods ,, 45 



VI CONTENTS. 

3. Management of classes 46 

4. Order and discipline of the school . - 46 

5. Quantity of work to be done . . 47 

6. Resolution of personal fidelity 48 

7. Personal details 48 

Chapter IV. 

Minor Preliminaries. 51 

1. A contract clearly understood 51 

2. The teacher's license 53 

3. Choice of a home 34 

4. Seeing that the school-house is ready 55 

5. Preliminary acquaintance with the schooL. 56 

6. Visiting other schools 58 

7. Procuring of needed materials 60 

8. Good physical and mental condition 61 

Chapter V. 

Beginning 62 

1. The first steps 62 

2. What shall first be done ? 63 

(a) Get to work at once - 64 

(6) Keep every pupil busy r _ . . 64 

3. Principles of classification 67 

4. Division of time 67 

5. What is to be taught ? 72 

6. Arranging classes 76 

(a) Arithmetic 77 

(b) Grammar and geography 78 

(c) Reading: - 78 

(d) Spelling 79 

(e) Penmanship 80 

(/) Language and composition..- 81 

(g) History and civil government 81 

(ft) Natural science 82 

7. General scheme of classes 82 

8. Little children 83 

9. Difficulties in classification... 84 

10. Bunch the pupils together 85 



CONTENTS. VI 1 

11. Review of the first day's work 88 

12. Programme of recitation and study 91 

(a) Alternate periods 91 

{b) Active periods in middle of session 91 

(c) Rest and stimulus to pupils 91 

(d) Relief to the teacher 92 

(e) Arithmetic not to come first 92 

(/) Adherence to the programme _ _ 93 

(g) Programme of study 93 

13. Seating of pupils 95 

(a) To have a plan and a purpose 95 

(b) Boys and girls . 95 

(c) Under the teacher's recognized authority. 96 

(d) Points worth consideration 97 

(A) Seats should not be too high or too low 97 

(B) Special exposure 98 

(C) Family antipathies 98 

(D) Individual dispositions 99 

Chapter VI. 

The Routine of School 101 

1. General considerations..., 101 

2. Order before school 103 - 

3. Record of attendance 105 

4. Opening exercises 106 

5. Business of the morning 109 

(a) Calling and dismissing classes 110 

(b) Recesses 112 

(A) Shall all be compelled to go out ? 114 

(B) What kind of games 116 

(C) How much noise? 117 

(D) No time lost in getting into order 119 

(c) Noon time 120 

(A) Eating lunch 120 

.(B) Scattering crumbs 120 

(G) Play better than study 121 

(D) Ventilation of school-house 121 

(E) Supervision 122 

(d) Miscellaneous suggestions. _ 124 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

6. Afternoon 125 

7. Closing exercise 125 

(a) No maudlin intirnac} T 127 

(b) After-school work - -128 

8. Miscellaneous Hints 128 

(a) Signals 128 

(b) Quietness 129 

(c) Asking permission 130 

(d) Neaeness in the school-room 131 

(e) Chewing gum, rubber, etc 132 

(/) Wardrobes. 133 

\g) School property 133 

(h) Care of out-buildings 134 

Chapter VII. 

General Exercises 136 

1. General considerations 137 

(a) Somewhat arbitrary and levelling 137 

(b) Oral instruction awakens 139 

(c) In some branches indispensable 139 

(d) Greater zest imparted 139 

2. The subjects of these exercises 140 

3. The manner " " " 142 

Chapter VIII. 

To the Young Teacher Directly 145 

Index 148 



HA]ND~BOOK£ FOR YOUNQ TEACHER, 



FIRST STEPS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE OUTFIT FOR TEACHING. 

Teaching, like every other business, re- 
quires a special outfit. The merchant must 
have some capital and some knowledge of 
the trade in which he embarks ; the lawyer 
must have knowledge of law and of modes 
of procedure; the physician must know the 
human body, the diseases which afflict it 
and the remedies which alleviate or cure 
them: without these none would expect or 
deserve to succeed as merchant, lawyer, or 
physician. Experience, as they acquire it, 
makes all these of ten-fold value, but a 
hopeful beginning cannot be made without 
them. It goes with the saying that teach- 
ing also requires its outfit. This should 
include, as a minimum, these. 



10 THE TEACHER'S OUTFIT. 

1. A good knowledge of subjects. 

It is a truism, but one that needs constant 
repetition and enforcement, that one cannot 
teach what he does not know ; that he can- 
not teach well what he does not know well; 
and that, other things being equal, there is 
a fixed relation between accuracy and ex- 
tent of knowledge on the one side, and 
efficiency and fruitfulness of teaching on 
the other side. Like produces like in 
knowledge, as in other things. It follows, 
therefore, that ignorance is utterly out of 
place as teacher, because one main function 
of teaching is to guide and inspire and cor- 
rect others in their acquisition of knowl- 
edge. " Bricks without Straw " is but a 
feeble comparison to set forth the worth- 
lessness and the impossibility of teaching 
without knowledge. 

This should include, (a) a thorough 
knowledge of every subject to be taught; 
(b) a fair acquaintance with collateral sub- 
jects; (c) good general information. If 
one is to teach the ordinary arithmetic of 
the schools, he should know that thoroughly, 



KNOWLEDGE OF SUBJECTS. 11 

and he should know higher arithmetic and 
elementary algebra; if he is to teach the 
rudiments of grammar, he should know the 
English language and should have, besides, 
some knowledge of some other language. 
That one should be content to know only a 
little more than his pupils, just enough 
to escape disgraceful exposure of ignorance 
in school recitations, is pitiful and wicked. 
Mastery of the subjects one is to teach, to 
the full extent to which those subjects are 
pursued, not in one's own classes only but 
also in the whole course of study laid down 
for any school, with a fair and increasing 
knowledge of kindred subjects, is the least 
that ought to satisfy any teacher. 

The general knowledge of a teacher can- 
not be too varied or extensive, provided 
that it is used with good sense. Let any 
one think how large a part of what goes to 
make up the intelligence of a well educated 
person was not learned from any text-book, 
and was not in any lesson he was required 
to recite, and he will understand how use- 
ful it is to know many things he will never 



12 THR TEACHER'S OUTFIT. 

assign to a class as a lesson. Let any teacher 
or any student call to mind how many ques- 
tions are suggested by any lesson well 
taught or well learned, and how valuable 
to the eager mind of either child or adult 
is the truth thus acquired along with the 
lesson from the book, and he will say that 
with equal technical knowledge, he who 
knows many things outside of the text-book, 
is by far and of necessity the better teacher. 
Indeed, he who knows only what he re- 
quires a pupil to learn cannot be a good 
teacher at all. 

Add to this the obvious consideration, 
that outside of school the teacher ought to be 
an acknowledged leader among the young 
at least, and ought to ' be respected by all 
who know him for his intelligence and de- 
votion to study, and no doubt can remain 
that the knowledge here demanded is not 
too great. The ideal teacher, even the 
ideal beginner, cannot do himself or his 
school full justice with a smaller outfit of 
intelligence. 

This requirement of knowledge is not for 



KNOWLEDGE OF CHILDREN. 13 

the purpose of a license to teach only ; it 
goes far beyond that. A school officer's 
examination, be it as strict and searching 
as any law demands, or as any ordinary ex- 
aminer practises, cannot call for a tithe of 
what every teacher ought to know. An 
honest beginner, meaning to make teaching 
a career, will not indeed despise his exami- 
nation for a license, but he will never be 
content with what it requires, nor suppose 
that it releases him from further study. 
The license is, at best, only a formal thing, 
and it is too often of no value, because it 
does not represent any real test to which 
the holder has been subjected. But in any 
case, the maximum an honest examiner re- 
quires, whether for the third grade license 
or the State certificate, should be the mini- 
mum with which any one ought to be satis- 
fied, and that only for the moment. There 
are no greater weights to-day on the com- 
mon schools than many of those whose ob- 
taining of an unlimited license to teach has 
marked the limit of their growth as scholars. 

2. A knowledge of the child who is 



14 THE TEACHER'S OUTFIT. 

to be educated, and of what education 
means. — The teacher's work is peculiar, 
as indeed every workman's is. Besides the 
subjects in which he must give instruction 
and the general information which is always 
so much addition to one's power over others, 
the teacher needs to know the nature of the 
child upon whom and with whom he works. 
He deals with children, and he needs to 
know them, that he may deal wisely with 
them. He needs to know more than their 
names and ages and what class they should 
be in ; he needs to know them as children, 
alike in general constitution, with certain 
endowments of nature, with certain capaci- 
ties and stages of development, with cer- 
tain tendencies toward habits, both good 
and bad. It is not enough that he knows 
them as he knows his playmates and com- 
panions, nor as he sees them in the family 
or in society. He must know how they are 
made up, to what in them he can appeal 
and to what he can address his efforts at 
instruction, what they can do and what 
they can learn. 



KNOWLEDGE OF CHILDREN. 15 

This knowledge includes (a) an acquain- 
tance with their physical being, that he 
may know the necessity of warmth and 
fresh air and proper exercise ; that he may 
have regard to posture in sitting, to. proper 
use of eyes, to proper hours of study, to 
the laws of health in general, in all school 
regulations and requirements. 

It includes (b) an acquaintance with 
the active and moral powers which prompt 
and guide human conduct. The child has 
desires and affections, sentiments and feel- 
ings, and a conscience, which are the key 
to behavior. It is necessary to know and to 
recognize these in all skilful dealing with 
him. It is impossible to understand, and 
hence to manage children, if this part of their 
nature is ignored. The sentiment of honor, 
the ambition to excel, the desire of appro- 
bation, the power of sympathy, appeals to 
a sense of right and wrong, are at once 
powerful and indispensable forces in educa- 
tion, if they are used with discretion. Such 
use of them depends, in the first instance, 
upon a knowledge of them, and this knowl- 



16 THE TEACHER'S OUTFIT. 

edge comes from attention to them and 
careful stud} r of them with reference to 
their use for this special purpose. 

It includes (c) some acquaintance with 
the workings and manifestations of the 
aesthetic sense. Taste is one of the gifts 
of nature, to be developed like any other 
gift, and it may be used, as it should be, as 
an auxiliary in all parts of education. 

It includes, especially, (d) an acquain- 
tance with the intellectual powers of 
children, as it is the special province of 
teaching to train the intellect. The teacher 
must consider what are the faculties con- 
cerned in knowing, their natural order of 
activity or development, the proper mode 
of their exercise, and how each subject of 
study and each lesson in each subject are 
adapted to the discij)line of one or more of 
them. Otherwise, he can only assign lessons 
and require work at random. Without 
this he can be only a mechanic and not a 
teacher, because he cannot work with intel- 
ligent reference to either results or pro- 
cesses. Perception, memory, imagination, 



KNOWLEDGE OF CHILDREN. 17 

judgment, have their appropriate spheres 
of action, and bring specific contributions 
to education ; and not to know them aright 
or at all, and not to use them with at least 
some recognition of their place and func- 
tions, is to work in ignorance of essentials, 
and, as a result which cannot be avoided, to 
do incomplete and bungling, if not wholly 
injurious, work. The human mind seems 
to have a most wonderful power of getting 
some good from almost any contact with 
truth, no matter how unmethodical or ill- 
directed ; else every effort of teaching 
which aims only at getting lessons, and so 
getting through a book, no matter how or 
for what purpose, or with what connec- 
tion with all that has gone before 
or all that is to come after, would 
be time and labor thrown away, or 
worse. It is essential to know by what 
avenues truth comes to the mind, how 
it is retained and used, the value and rela- 
tions of different truths, and in what way 
and at what time each set of truths is most 
likely to contribute most to mental growth. 



18 THE TEACHER'S OUTFIT. 

m 

Teaching without this may be lucky, but it 
cannot be intelligent ; it may accomplish 
something by ingenious imitation of a 
model, or by unthinking repetition, but it 
can never be the work of a master. 

3. Knowing how to adapt instruc- 
tion to the mind of the pupil. — Given 
the truth by which the child's mind is 
to grow, and with which it is to be furnished 
for future needs,and the child with such and 
such capacities, who by his education is to 
be prepared for all the duties of coming 
life, the question, how to make the most of 
the opportunity of teaching him, is a very 
serious question. Any kind of instruction 
will produce some result; children's won- 
derful capacity of acquisition will allow 
them to get some good from almost any 
teacher who really tries to do them good ; 
but it needs no argument to show that 
thoughtful, intelligent, methodical teaching 
is much more certain of good results than 
ever so earnest, ever so honest teaching 
that works without method, and as it 



TACT IN INSTRUCTION. 19 

chances, or at least only by imitation of 
others. 

The questions, how can I best present 
this lesson to the child, with reference to 
what he already knows and what comes 
after in the same direction, when ought he 
to learn this lesson, what intellectual results 
ought to follow learning it, should be con- 
stantly before the teacher. Many other 
questions will go with these ; such as, how 
to fix attention, how to test a child's under- 
standing of what has been taught, how to 
cultivate the power and habit of expression, 
how to train the different faculties so as to 
produce a proper balance and poise of all ;. 
and all these will keep the growing teacher's 
mind in a state of continual inquiry and 
study. But the fundamental, preliminary 
study will be how to adapt truth to the 
mind of the child, how to teach so that he 
may learn. In this way only can teaching 
be skilful and fruitful. 

It is not asserted that every young teach- 
er must, in all cases alike, take the full 
course of instruction in Normal or other 



20 THE TEACHER'S OUTFIT. 

special schools, before be begins to teach; 
it is asserted that every one who proposes 
to teach should make conscientious use of 
such opportunities as can be had of inquir- 
ing diligently how teaching should be done, 
and that he should repeat and reiterate the 
question as long as he teaches. Every 
young teacher should ask himself whether 
he knows the secrets of learning to read and 
to draw and to cipher, how truth and the 
mind are related, and whether he can safely 
guide the child in paths he himself has trod ; 
or whether his teachings, as with present 
knowledge it must be done, will be only a 
leading of the blind by one blinder than 
they. It is high time to compel every one 
who offers himself as a teacher at least to 
consider the question, how he will teach; 
it is time to urge upon all such the dis- 
honesty, the incompetency, the certain fail- 
ure of teaching which does not scrupulously 
think what teaching means and how the 
mind of the learner grows. It is a correct 
analogy to say that if a preacher needs to 
know how divine truth is adapted to the 



MATURITY. 21 

spiritual needs of men, or the physician 
should know how and what medicines are 
adapted to bodily diseases, or the lawyer 
what provisions of the law apply to the 
maintenance of his client's rights, then and 
for the same reasons should the teacher 
know how truth enlightens ignorance, what 
truths are adapted to all phases of ignor- 
ance, and by what process of teaching the 
child is best led up to manhood. Beside 
these particulars of professional outfit, cer- 
tain personal elements must not be over- 
looked. 

4. Tt is too much the fashion for 
mere boys and girls to teach school. — 

The false opinion, or at least practice, pre- 
vails of setting out in life by a bout of 
school-teaching. Before education is com- 
pleted, pupils aspire to be teachers. A boy 
or a girl, whom none would trust with any 
other important business, does not hesitate 
to offer to teach, as if that were a business 
fit for the most inexperienced. Many a 
school is taught by girls of seventeen, or by 
boys of eighteen, and taught as is alone 



22 THE TEACHER S OUTFIT. 

possible by such youth. No one attempts 
to fix an absolute age for beginning this 
work, but it is obviously a wrong of no 
small magnitude that children should be 
teachers ! that those whose own education 
is just begun should attempt to educate 
others ! that mere youth should be playing 
at what the oldest and wisest find a suffi- 
cient exercise of their powers ! 

5. But more important than this, and an 
accompaniment and at least in part a pro- 
duct of years, is that sum of forces and 
attainments which is called character. 
A teacher needs to have grown to be a 
man or a woman in character before best, 
or even acceptable, work can be done. He 
should be known as having a settled pur- 
pose in life, as having made attainments, 
as giving his energies to his business, as 
feeling the responsibilities of his calling, 
as seeking for and valuing the esteem of 
the good rather than being ambitious of 
companionship and the applause of the idle 
and frivolous, as a student, a reader, a thinker 
and a worker, and all this out of school as 



character: adaptation. 23 

well as in school. Keeping school six hours 
and frolicking the rest of the time, hearing 
lessons from nine in the morning to four in 
the afternoon, but with the undercurrent 
of thought on the evening's and Saturday's 
fun, laboring with the children while the 
mind and the interest are even divided with 
outside and diverting pursuits or pleasures, 
is not to be a teacher ; this ~is not to show 
the solidity and sobriety of character which 
ought to be the perpetual recommendation 
of every teacher. All avocations which 
affect human beings as such demand and 
cannot do without those moral qualities 
which they seek to produce in others. No 
person without a settled character is fit to 
be a teacher. 

6. A disposition and temper which 
befit this special calling. Certain 
stock qualities, such as patience, are popu- 
larly supposed to be especially necessary 
in teaching. These, and more than these, 
are now meant. Dealing with intellect and 
character in their formative stages, requires 
both great readiness of intellectual resources 



24 tht teacher's outfit. 

and great power of sympathy with children. 
A teacher should be cheerful, that he may 
encourage and dispense cheerfulness to all 
about him ; he should be sincere in word 
and act, and to this end must be sincere in 
heart ; he must be equable, not all smiles 
and sunshine at one time, and then all 
frowns and storms at another, now throw- 
ing everything into confusion by unneces- 
sary and excessive laxity of discipline, and 
now confounding every thing by equally un- 
due severity ; he must be patient, both in 
instructing and in managing, hopeful of all 
good to come from his teaching, courageous 
in every effort put forth, untiring in all la- 
bor to do that which he has set out to do. 
And most of all, he must sympathize with — 
that is, enter into full feeling with — 
children in their difficulties, temptations, 
efforts and wants. He should be able to 
put himself close by their side and not only 
to understand, but to experience, their 
state of mind, and with them to try to do 
what he requires of them. 

If it seems to any that cheerfulness, sin- 



DISPOSITION AND TEMPER. 25 

cerity, steadiness, patience, hope, courage, 
perseverance and sympathy with children, 
are rather traits of moral character than ele- 
ments of what is generally understood as a 
person's disposition, let them be so classed, 
as they may certainly become such by the 
manner in which they are cultivated and 
the use to which they are put ; only let 
their necessity be acknowledged, and let 
those who are to teach ask seriously whether 
they do now form part of their outfit. 

7. One thing more belongs to this 
outfit; good physical health. This, 
though mentioned last, is not least in impor- 
tance. The feeble, the sickly, the deformed, 
would be far less out of place on a farm as 
laborers than in a school as teachers. Prop- 
er intellectual activity, vigorous teaching, 
salutary discipline, are impossible in a dys- 
peptic, a consumptive or neuralgic patient. 
It is no less than an outrage that the motive 
for teaching should be expressed in these 
words; " I can do such light work for six 
hours, and rest and nurse myself out of 

school." Children should not be educated 
3 



S'B THE TEACHER'S OUTFIT. 

in the presence of bodily feebleness or 
deformity ; no sound intellectual and 
moral health can be nurtured by those who 
have just physical strength to drag their 
limbs about during the day, and who are 
constant exhibitions of bodily suffering,of ir- 
ritated nerves and fatigue, and who must, 
therefore, depress and worry the school life 
of children by converting what should be 
an earnest, active, busy, intellectual work- 
shop into a hospital for one unfortunate 
and generally unhappy being, and a prison 
for two score of children. 

This is the necessary mininum outfit for 
teaching. If any has it not, he, she, should 
wait and work till it is obtained. There is 
no need of any who fail in any particular ; 
the schools will not suffer if any who are 
deficient in these things will keep out of 
them ; they will suffer only as such enter 
their service. There are schools without 
number where a free general education, 
and a free special education for teaching, 
can be had ; why then enter this profession 
without the necessary education? Time 



PHYSICAL HEALTH. 27 

and wholsome discipline, if nature lias given 
suitable endowments, will bring character, 
and time should be taken and discipline be 
submitted to and even sought, severe as are 
its trials, rather than any should go into 
school without their result in character. If 
one has not the right disposition, then he 
would far better follow the other business 
which his disposition does fit him, or for 
which it does not unfit him, than work ruin 
through his irremediable faults in this. If 
he has not health and symmetry of body, 
let him bear it as he can, but let him not 
spoil what might be a good school by mak- 
ing it at once an asylum and a failure, 

Should those only begin to teach 
who have a settled purpose to follow 
it for life ? — This is not asserted, nor is it 
an article of professional faith. But only 
those should ever begin who have this out- 
fit ; only those should begin whose qualifi- 
cations are nearly what they ought to be if 
they do intend to make this a business for 
life ; only those who mean to use these 
qualifications while they are teaching as 



28 the teachee's outfit. 

if they intended to teach all their lives, 
should ever enter the school house. 

Does this whole doctrine seem to shut 
the door against many with a license to 
teach in their pockets, who knock at it, and 
knock with much persistence of claim and 
much assistance of influential friends ? It 
may fairly be so understood. 



CHAPTER II. 



GENERAL PLAN OF WORK: EDUCATION AND 
SCHOOL. 

Many young teachers begin their work 
without " laying it out " beforehand. They 
are willing to labor, but they have no defi- 
nite plan and simply teach from day to day 
as well as they know how. Their teaching 
is a more or less direct imitation of others, 
and has little thought beyond daily lessons 
and getting as nearly through the book as 
may be. A term or a year of the school is 
not a definite part of the school life of the 
child in which he must obtain a definite and 
pre-arranged part of education ; nor has the 
school itself a distinct part to play in the 
life of the child, a part whose boundaries 
and results can be marked out beforehand 
with tolerable accuracy. The work done 
is done in all honesty and all fidelity, but 
it is very often work without plan or 



30 GENERAL PLAN OF WORK. 

method, and very often without any distinct 
aim. The thought of this chapter and of 
the next is, that the teacher should consider 
and plan his work before he begins it, and 
that he should follow out his plan as formed 
and as modified by circumstances, or by his 
own growing experience. In other words, 
the young teacher should consider what he 
is going to do, aud how he proposes to do 
it. He should do this in general before he 
begins, and he should do it in particular for 
every day of his teaching. 

This planning of both should consider : 

1. What education is. — To know this, 
or at least to consider it, is fundamental to 
all intelligent teaching. No one can do 
his part of educating a child well unless 
he has some understanding of what the 
whole of education is. It is not proposed 
here to discuss theories of education, or 
even to give exact definition of the term, 
but only to direct attention to the subject 
as one to v which thought should be con- 
stantly given. In general it should be un- 
derstood and remembered and constantly 



WHAT EDUCATION IS. 31 

applied, that education is the process of 
developing and furnishing the child so that 
he may have possession and control of him- 
self and all his faculties, and may be a man 
instead of a child. Anv thing that trains 
any of the child's powers, whatever gives 
him knowledge or teaches him to do, or 
contributes to mastery of himself and con- 
trol of other men or of the forces of nature, 
all that helps to form opinions, to settle 
principles, to fix habits, to produce ability 
of any kind, educates. The result of edu- 
cation, whether complete or defective, is 
manhood, whether complete or defective ; 
and whatever all along the road from child- 
hood to the fullest development and power 
the person ever attains, tends to any further 
development and power, educates. Educa- 
tion begins in the cradle and ends only with 
dotage or the grave, or with the stupidity 
of indifference or brutality. The nursery 
educates ; the home educates ; the church 
educates ; the day-school and the Sunday- 
school, the play -ground, the street, the shop, 
the circus, the menagerie, the placard on 



32 GENERAL PLAN OF WORK. 

the wall, the newspaper, the dime novel, 
the book, the boys and girls and the men 
and women one meets, all educate. It is 
thus a life-long and very complex process 
resulting in a very complex product. A 
hundred forces bring their tribute to it, 
and it is not possible to separate into dis- 
tinct threads the web which is so closely 
woven of them all. It is important that 
the teacher should have some conception of 
the extent, variety and mutual relations of 
the influences and forces which educate, 
that he may know with whom he is co- 
worker and what all teachers combined are 
helping each other produce. 

2. What part of education the school 
teacher has for his special province.— 

From what is said above, it is evident that 
but a small part of the work of education is 
in the teacher's hands, but that part is defi- 
nite and very important. By saying it is 
but a small part, it is to be understood that 
the time over which it extends is short com- 
pared with the life of the man, and that it 
is confined within prescribed limits, and 



THE TEACHER'S PROVINCE. 33 

that it could not be omitted without serious, 
if not fatal, loss. No other single factor in 
education does so much that tells on all the 
future of the child as school does, and 
hence the common use of the term educa- 
tion means school-education only. If the 
teacher understands what his special duties 
are, and how and at what points his in- 
struction dove-tails with other lessons, he 
will surely do his part better than he other- 
wise could. 

This special province may be briefly in- 
dicated under two heads : 

The school is specially for (a) intellect- 
ual training and (b) the acquisition of use- 
ful hnowledge. The parent values the school 
as the place where his child learns to read 
and write, and acquires such other knowl- 
edge as the authorities provide for. The 
extent and variety of this knowledge 
depend, of course, on the particular school ; 
but whatever its grade, its primary aim is 
to give instruction to the end that the pupil 
may know what his parents, or others in 
power, think may be useful for him to know. 



34 GENERAL PLAN OF WORK. 

Together with this in the mind of the 
teacher and the intelligent parent, goes the 
training of the mental powers so that the 
learner may presently be able to form his 
own opinions, to prosecute further study on 
his own account, and to be, in short, intel- 
lectually independent of the teacher. 

It is difficult to decide which of these 
two should be the primary purpose of com- 
mon school education. Fortunately, right 
teaching of useful knowledge disciplines 
the powers, and the few subjects of such 
education which are valued for their alleged 
disciplinary power may be made to con- 
tribute something to practical utility. Be 
this as it may, schools are for learning, and 
the business of teaching is to train the 
intellect to the acquisition of useful knowl- 
edge. But for this specific purpose, they 
would not be maintained, and here is the 
teacher's especial province. Children come 
to him to learn, and by learning to develop 
and strengthen their minds. 

To state this in a different and more 



INFORMATION AND DISCIPLINE. 35' 

precise form, the intellectual results of 
school should be, 

1. Possession and mastery of the tools 
of knowledge, reading, writing, arithmetic,, 
and language. 

2. Such useful knowledge as all will be 
certain to need in after life. 

3. Such discipline of the faculties as will 
fit for actual observation, correct reasoning 
within the range of one's knowledge, and 
the formation of right opinions. 

4. A love of knowledge, and right 
method of study, so that the education 
begun in school may be carried on, according 
to opportunity, all through life. 

(b.) But learning from books cannot be 
separated, and ought not to be separated,, 
from other lessons. While Reading, Arith- 
metic, and Geography are learned, nay, in 
order that they may be learned, the teacher 
must steadily enforce the formation and 
practice of right habits. Classes cannot 
exist, schools cannot exist, unless in these 
miniature communities such habits as 
larger communities need, are constantly 



Si) GENERAL PLAN OF WORK. 

inculcated. Order, discipline, attention, 
respect for others, submission to authority, 
are essential here as elsewhere, and there 
can be no school worthy of the name 
if they are wanting. The formation of 
these habits is the secondary work of the 
school ; secondary, not in the sense of their 
being less valuable than lessons in arith- 
metic and geography, but in the sense that 
school is not established on their account in 
the first instance. These good habits are 
insisted on, with reference first of all, to 
their necessity in order that lessons may be 
properly learned ; but, like the lessons 
whose acquisition they promote, their value 
does not cease when school-days are ended, 
but they and the lessons accompany and 
help the man in all future life. 

The distinct purpose of the school, then, 
is clearly defined as being the intellectual 
training of the child, and information of 
right habits, and to these ends the thoughts 
and efforts of the teacher should be studi- 
ously directed. 

3. It is well to add a third particular, viz, 



INFORMATION AND DISCIPLINE. 37 

tli at school should at least not interfere 
with education in matters outside of its- 
own special province. If it does not teach 
religion, all its spirit and influence and 
indirect power should be on the side of 
religion. If "it does not teach politics, in 
the right sense of that term, all its precepts 
and principles should inculcate the probity 
and candor which should be carried into 
the management of political affairs. If it 
does not impart taste and culture, techni- 
cally so called, its whole tone and example 
should be in the direction of taste and cul- 
ture, and not in opposition to them. 

4. How ordinary school work is 
adapted to these ends and may be made 
most effective in promoting them. 

The teacher works in the dark who simply 
teaches certain subjects, as they are pre- 
scribed and because they are prescribed, 
without asking how they are effectual 
means to a definite end clearly apprehended. 
The teacher has considered the result which 
is to come from education, and so knows 
what he is aiming at; he has defined the 



38 GENERAL PLAN OF WORK. 

part which belongs especially to himself, 
and so concentrates his energies upon his 
own business; further, he should consider 
how his own work really makes for the 
.general and the special result, and what di- 
rect contributions to that result it brings. 
He may, indeed, shield himself behind the 
course of study laid down for him .; he may 
say, I have to follow instructions of prin- 
cipal or school officer, and have no discre- 
tion in the matter. Granting this, it still 
remains equally true that the teacher should 
know what he, personally and individually, 
is about. He is, by the rules, to teach 
arithmetic ; what will arithmetic bring to 
the final result of education ?' He is to 
teach grammar ; what is grammar good for 
in manhood or in life % And if the answers 
to these questions do not change the sub- 
stance of his work, they will change the 
spirit and the manner of it. When the 
teacher understands why such and such 
subjects are to be taught — and there must 
be supposed justification of each — he will 
teach with intelligent reference to this rea~ 



THE REASON WHY. 39 

son, and with an interest in each not other- 
wise possible. Without this, reading is 
simply a class exercise, and geography, a 
series of disconnected questions ; they are 
taught because they are to be taught, and 
that is the end of all thought about it. 

But it is even more important that the 
teacher should consider the significance and 
value of all that is done in schools under 
the general name of management or gov- 
ernment. Here is no such prescription as 
in the matter of studies ; here the teacher 
is always, to great extent, his own master 
and is left to his own resources. Unless 
he works blindly and mechanically, he will 
ask, why are classes arranged in this way 
and not in some other ? Why is this, and 
this, required ? To what good end is this 
point of order insisted on and that regula- 
tion enforced ? What is the present value 
of punctuality and its bearing on the future 
well-doing of the child ? What factor of 
the manhood which is to come by and by 
is likely to result from the enforcement of 
this rule about whispering \ What useful 



40 GENEEAL PLAN OF WORK. 

quality is cultivated by " keeping after 
school ? Why not omit all this attention to 
manner of standing and order of going to 
class and ways of holding books, and a. 
hundred other less or more important mat- 
ters? 

There would result from such considera- 
tion of the whole range of school duties as 
is here suggested this at least, and this 
would be much ; the teacher would do all 
he does with some definite purpose in view,, 
and he would omit to do anything whose 
bearing on the result he aimed at is not ev- 
ident. Every thing done in school would 
have a meaning to the teacher, and all, 
whether in instructing or managing, would 
in his mind tend to the one great end of 
school. 



CHAPTER III. 



PLAN OF WORK, PARTICULAR AND PERSONAL. 

Besides the general considerations al- 
ready mentioned which will necessarily 
lead to many details, it is well to begin 
school with a particular plan of work, care- 
fully made out in writing and to be fol- 
lowed, unless reason for changing it is 
found. The teacher who has no ex- 
perience of his own for a guide, or that of 
but a single term or two, cannot work 
wisely or comfortably if he trust to the 
chances of the day. He is more likely to 
do well if his work is laid out in minute 
detail, provided only he does not feel bound 
to follow that detail at all hazards. This 
plan may properly include these particulars. 

1. Some standard or ideal toward 
which the school shall rise. — The young 
teacher, if he have at all the right spirit, 



42 THE PLAN OF WORK. 

will aim at excellence. He will not be 
content with anything short of the best 
he can do. His career is all before him 
and he has everything to learn. He 
is anxious to succeed, and is willing to pay 
the price of success. All practicable prep- 
aration is made and the final question is, 
What is the ideal school toward ivhich my 
real school shall continually strive f 

The school must be taken as it is ; school- 
houses, furniture, apparatus, conveniences 
are as they are ; the children w T ith their 
habits and great need of instruction, the 
parents with their notions of school and 
what the teacher should do, and the school 
officer with his notions of economy and 
neglect of all but the most formal duties, 
are very much of one pattern, the pattern 
of common humanity ; and with them as 
they are the teacher begins his career. He 
may, he should, set up in his own mind an 
ideal he would like to attain. He may, he 
should, ask to what degree of order, regu- 
larity, discipline shall I strive to bring my 
school ? what degree and spirit of obedience 



A STANDARD NEEDED. 43 

and docility, what measure of industry and 
love of learning, should I like to see and 
will I endeavor to secure ? what sort of 
school in its lessons and behavior should I 
like to have ? 

This ideal may sometimes very properly 
be a school which seems to the beginner's 
present knowledge almost the sum of all- 
attainable excellence. He would not like 
his school to resemble some he has seen, or 
attended as pupil, in any single particular ; 
but he would like it to resemble in all 
things another in which he first learned to 
learn, and which has seemed to him ever 
since to have been what all schools ought 
to be. The order, the lessons, the spirit of 
that school, are a model he would now feel 
satisfied to imitate as closely as he can. 
Some teacher's conception of discipline and 
his means of carrying it out, his standard 
of lessons and his persuasiveness of resources 
for compelling such lessons, the whole tone 
and atmosphere of the school under his in- 
spiration, were such as any tyro would do 
well to reproduce in his own school. This 



44 THE PLA2? OF WORK. 

is certainly better than no standard ; it is 
safer to follow a good model than to have 
no guide. Exact imitation is not, in any 
case, desirable, if it were possible ; the 
ways and means of another may be alto- 
gether admirable as used by him, and sim- 
ply ridiculous and feeble as used by any 
other. The young teacher may do well to 
study the spirit of his model that he may 
work into the same spirit, and, copying 
what he can make good use of, trans- 
form this copy into his own method and 
manner as fast as he acquires experience. 

But it is wise to form out of one's own ex- 
perience as a pupil, and his observance of 
others made with special reference to this 
end, and the most careful consideration of 
actual circumstances, a standard or ideal 
one would be glad and will strive to make 
real. This is the way to study ; th%s is the 
way to recite ; this is the way to teach ; this 
is the way to make children love study ; this 
is what order in school means ; this is the 
way in which pupils ought to behave, and 
this is the example the teacher ought to set 



SPECIFIC METHODS. 45 

for their imitation ; the spirit and character 
of my school ought to be such and such, 
when I leave it, and toward all these I will 
constantly work. The resolution which 
asserts such intentions and expresses such 
an ideal is more likeiy to attain results, than 
going into school with no standard and a 
consequent working toward no definite end. 

2. As clear a settelement as possible 
of the specific methods to be used in 
teaching, with their details. — For ex- 
ample : shall reading be taught by the 
" word method," or by some other % If 
by the former, the successive steps of teach- 
ing in that way should be clearly marked 
out and followed. So with penmanship ; 
shall it be taught by writing words after a 
copy, or by combining elements first prac- 
tised by themselves, into letters and words ? 
Then the details of the method to be used 
should be carefully and fully worked 
through and used as a guide in the daily 
lessons. About reading, beyond the first 
steps, it is to be considered in what good 
reading consists, what sort and extent of 



46 THE PLAN OF WORK. 

elocutionary practice is beneficial, what 
common faults and bad habits will need 
correction and how to do it, what time is 
to be given to it compared with that given 
to arithmetic, etc. 

And so with all the subjects to be 
taught. Not only is it to be fixed that 
every thing is to be taught methodically, 
but the specific method with its details 
should be thoroughly prepared, according 
to the teacher's knowledge and judgment. 

3. The management of classes, and 
the order of recitations. — What a 
recitation is, and what it is for, and what are 
marks of a good one, are points sometimes 
not sufficiently considered. What the teach- 
er's part in a recitation is, and what the 
pupil's, what is order in a class, details 
of manner, of expression, and all that per- 
tains to the class while reciting as well as to 
the recitation itself, should receive atten- 
tion in this plan of work. 

4. The same is true of all the order 
and discipline of the school. — The man- 
ner of opening, recesses, dismissal, the 



A DEFINITE AIM. 47 

character of general exercises, if any ; cer- 
tain things common in other schools to be 
allowed or discouraged or prohibited ; cer- 
tain things thought to be desirable, to be 
introduced ; the correcting of whispering, 
the securing of punctuality, — in short, 
everything that is sure beforehand to de- 
mand the teacher's attention should, as far 
as circumstances will allow, be planned be- 
forehand. 

5. Quantity of work to be done. — It 

will help much in any school to fix some 
point which, if possible, the school shall at- 
tain. Every pupil shall be able to write at 
least a legible hand, to read a newspaper or 
book so as to be understood, to express 
himself in good English about what he 
knows ; such a goal set before the teacher 
at the beginning and kept resolutely before 
the mind will have a wonderful effect in 
keeping all up to their work ; the constant 
aim and the frequent expression will be, 
we must do what we have set out to do, if 
possible. 



48 THE PLAN OF' WORK. 

6. A resolution of personal fidelity 
and devotion to the one business of 
teaching this school. — It is to have, 
in all ordinary circumstances, precedence 
of all other claims on time, labor, interest 
and energy. Punctuality, regularity, prep- 
aration of lessons, daily thought how to 
make the most of school, ungrudging at- 
tention to all details, are to be matters of 
course. Every outside employment, all 
that diverts interest or withdraws needed 
labor from school, is to be summarily put 
after school, and if anything else has any 
place at all, it is to come in after the full 
legitimate demands of the school, and for 
the sake of certainty a little more, have all 
been met; whatever this may exclude should 
be excluded, and whatever this may in- 
clude should come within the spirit and 
scope of the resolution. 

7. Some other personal details should 
be included in this plan. What , degree of 
intimacy and what measure of reserve 
should be practised with pupils ; proper re- 
lations with parents ; both due regard for, 



PERSONAL DETAILS. 49 

and how to secure, the co-operation and as- 
sistance of school officers ; in what form of 
self -improvement leisure time shall be 
spent ; what is the right policy in such 
matters as any participation in party poli- 
tics, or in the special ambition of the neigh- 
borhood, or any actual effort in the direc- 
tion of the popular amusements most in 
vogue, or to what extent it is desirable to 
mingle with what is called society ; all 
these should have a place in the outline of 
work, a place which should be fixed in the 
first instance by the paramount considera- 
tions, what does school require and, what 
does it allow. 

Nor should all these details be mere 
matter of form, or only as general, loose 
notions, simply to start on. While no rigid 
plan can or should be formed, a definite 
one can and should be. It should be a rule 
to live by, a chart to be followed, open at 
all times for correction and addition, but 
not a thing of caprice. Good work is based 
on a plan which, taking into the account 
all the circumstances within reach and fore- 



50 THE PLAN OF WORK. 

seeing a result to be attained, permits no 
serious departure from its path and leads 
right on to the end. Definiteness of plan 
prevents wasting of power ; it marks out a 
straight road ; it calls for and uses energies 
concentrated on specific objects, and it 
greatly contributes to victory over obstacles 
and to certainty of results, which want of 
plan, backed by whatever honesty of labor 
or frequent fits of zeal, can never win. 



CHAPTER IV. 



MINOR PRELIMINARIES. 

A few minor points of preparation are 
worth mentioning, because some are care- 
less about them, thinking that they either 
need no attention or can be attended to at 
any time when nothing else is on hand. 
Teaching school, like any other occupation, 
requires habits of business, and neglect 
of what seem minor matters often involves 
the destruction of what seems more im- 
portant. These further preliminary de- 
tails include: 

1. A clearly understood bargain 
between school officers and teachers. 
It is better always to make a written con- 
tract, for which blank forms can easily be 
obtained. Trouble may arise, in which 
case such contract is the best evidence for 
both parties; but without apprehending any 
thing of this nature, when service is to be 



52 MINOR PRELIMINARIES. 

rendered and pay is to be received, it is 
only prudent tliat the agreement should be 
very definite and very clearly understood. 
There should be no doubt when school is 
to begin, what the term of service is to be, 
what wages are to be received, and how 
and when such wages are to be paid, what 
unusual duties, if any, are expected of the 
teacher, what conveniences are to be sup- 
plied by the district; in short, there should 
be no doubt on any point that can be an- 
ticipated. It happened to the writer long 
ago to teach in a district in which the cus- 
tom had prevailed that the teacher should 
notify each head of family in sucession 
that a load of wood was needed at the 
school house, and to see that it was con- 
venient for A or B to bring such load, or 
else to find some one who could and would 
bring his load out of turn. It was also ex- 
pected that the teacher would not only 
make out the rate-bills at the end of the 
term, but collect them too, and so get his 
pay. Nothing of this sort may now be re- 
quired any where, but it is prudent to 



CONTRACT AND LICENSE. 53 

know beforehand what is to be done on 
both sides. It is not meant for a discour- 
tesy, but for a simple fact, when it is added 
that ladies, as yet, have not fully learned 
the necessity of making such bargains in 
business-like fashion. 

And when a bargain has been made, 
like any other engagement between con- 
tracting parties, it is to be kept. If the 
district is bound to pay, the teacher is 
bound to earn his pay according to the 
terms of- the agreement. It should be kept 
without evasion, and with honor. The 
obligation to teach as well as one can, with- 
out grumbling or grudging, is of the same 
nature and of the same force as the obliga- 
tion to pay for the teaching ; such a con- 
tract cannot be broken by either party, and 
the teacher is bound to do as lie agrees, 
just as much as any other person is bound 
to the service he has promised. 

2. The license. — Every where some 
license or certificate of competency is re- 
quired. This should always be obtained 
at the right time, and that is before the^ 



54 MINOR PRELIMINARIES. 

school begins ; the teacher should not be 
willing to enter the school-house for one 
day without his license or certificate. The 
law requires this, but the administration of 
law is sometimes careless or lax. Aside 
from all laws, no teacher, for his own sake 
or for his school's sake, should allow him- 
self to begin school without being qualified 
as the law requires. Especially should the 
young teacher be unwilling to begin, or 
think he can begin, with his license yet to 
be obtained. Such young teacher will have 
trials enough without any anxiety about his 
license. 

3. Making arrangements for his home 
during the term or year. — He should 
"get settled" before school begins. He will 
need to do this in order to have all his time 
and thoughts for his school. He cannot 
neglect that to be finding a boarding-place, 
or to be making himself comfortable. The 
first days of school generally determine 
what all the rest will be, and the first days 
should be devoted exclusively to getting 
the school well under way. In order to do 



THE SCHOOL HOUSE IN READINESS. 55 

this, the teacher will need to be settled be- 
fore school begins. 

4. Seeing that the school-house and 
all that belongs to it are ready. — It may 

not be his duty to make it ready, but it is 
his interest to see that it is ready, and he 
had better make it so than that it should 
not be done at all. It is not prudent to 
arrive on Monday morning at nine o'clock^ 
ready to call the school to order, for if 
things are not in readiness he will never re- 
cover from the neglect to see that they 
were made so. A proper interest in his 
work will prompt him to make sure that 
nothing which he can prevent shall spoil 
the beginning of his work. The house 
has been repaired, and the rubbish has not 
been removed from the rooms, or may be 
lying about the yard ; there may be no pro- 
vision for sweeping and dusting and open- 
ing the doors, or no wood for the first fire, 
or no one to light it ; there may be need of 
a pane of glass, or a hinge, or a door-latch ; 
these may be need of new seats or repairs to 
those now there. The teacher may 



56 MINOR PRELIMINARIES. 

properly be asked to do any one of these 
tilings, and it may be the clear duty of some 
other person to see that they are done ; but 
it will be better for him to be sure that 
they are done, knowing as he does that 
such things are only too apt to be neg- 
lected, and that they concern him more 
than they do any one else. He will surely 
not suffer in reputation by being on the 
ground and being seen and known as attend- 
ing to them and getting ready to make a good 
beginning when Monday comes. ~No one 
ever yet lost ground by knowing for himself 
that all details of his business just about to 
commence were provided for, and many a 
one — many a young teacher, not to say older 
ones — has suffered from this very neglect of 
preliminary details. The fault has been 
only that they did not think of such things, 
but the consequence has been an embar- 
rassed start and a sense of carelessness and 
incompetency difficult to rally from, if not 
a reputation for negligence which follows 
them as long as they remain. 

5. 8ueh acquaintance with the con- 



PRELIMINARY ACQUAINTANCE. 57 

dition and traditions of the school as 
he can obtain. A knowledge of the 
school, such as the former teacher or the 
officer of the district or some resident, if 
asked, will give, will put the new teacher 
upon his guard against what might be op- 
position easily turned into persecution, if 
not wisely met. It will help him in deter- 
mining how to deal with any specially un- 
ruly children or any disaffected families ; 
it will help him avoid the difficulties into 
which some predecessor may have fallen ; 
it will show what mistakes he must try to 
avoid, and with whom he must deal with 
especial prudence. If he can find how 
" the land lies " he w T ill be far less likely to 
incur unnecessary risks, and far more likely 
to shape his course so as at least not to 
make enemies, if he takes pains to learn 
what is proper for him to know about his 
school and the people. It should not be 
necessary to say that these inquires will 
properly pertain only to what he,as teacher, 
will need to know, and will not include the 

ordinary gossip of talkers and news-mon- 
5 



58 MINOR PRELIMINARIES. 

gers ; the less he knows of this at the out- 
set and all the way through the better for 
himself and the school ; but he may with 
much advantage inquire into anything, a 
knowledge of which would be useful in 
that school at that time. 

6. The visiting of some good school 
for the sake of observing its ways and 
consultation with some teacher of ex- 
perience for the benefit of his advice. 

A person of quick perceptions, with an im- 
mediate personal interest in what is going 
on because he is soon to undertake the 
same, will learn more of direct practical 
benefit from closely observing for two days 
the routine of a well-ordered school than 
from double that time spent in the study 
of theories. Let such a one see how school 
is brought to order in the morning, how 
classes are called, how questions are asked 
and answered, how work is put upon the 
blackboard, how the teacher appears to con- 
trol and regulate every movement by every- 
thing he does, without violent demonstra- 
tion or even show of authority ; let him 



VALUE OF OBSERVATION. 59 

try to detect the spirit which reigns and 
which dictates the variety and flexibility of 
resources for maintaining order and giving 
good instruction, while he watches how 
every movement is made, and the beginner 
will have a guide from which he can at 
least learn something which it would take 
him long to find out for himself. And if 
besides this observation of a good school, 
he can talk freely with an older teacher 
and seek advice on such points as seem 
difficult or obscure to him, this will be of 
further benefit. Many would in this way 
be helped out of difficulties from which 
their books and all their previous education 
would not relieve them. Such visits and 
conferences would be of great aid in 
forming the plan of work spoken of above. 
Indeed, it may safely be said that no one, 
intent on learning how to teach and manage 
his own school, can visit any school or talk 
half an hour with any teacher, without get- 
ing many hints of what and how to do, or 
of what to avoid and why. Of the three 
principal means of improvement, — practice, 



60 MINOR PRELIMINARIES. 

observation, and study, — probably observa* 
tion is, to a certain limited extent, for be- 
ginners the most productive. 

7. The procuring of such materials 
as will he needed for school and per- 
sonal study.— The teacher will need books 
for his own use in connection with classes, 
and books that he means to read and study 
for his own profit. Nearly every teacher, 
in the course of his study and preparation 
for teaching, has thought, for example, of 
some simple way of illustrating points in 
arithmetic, for which he will need blocks, 
or a set of measures and weights, etc. ; or, he 
wishes to give oral lessons in physics, as he 
has opportunity, and he will need some in- 
expensive materials and contrivances for 
the purpose. That a teacher shall expend 
his wages, before they are earned, for the 
benefit of the district, is not meant, but that 
he shall provide what he can afford and 
means to have before he actually needs it. 
The spectacle of a teacher arriving to begin 
a winter's or a year's school with not a 
tittle of professional furniture is an unprom- 



BEGINNING AT ONe's BEST. 61 

ising one, but it is no libel to say that a few 
both arrive, remain, and depart, in just this 
beggarly condition. 

8. Coming to school in good physical 
and mental condition. — ISTo teacher has 
a right to come to his school for the first 
time or to come back to it, in a jaded con- 
dition of body or mind. One just from a 
summer of hard physical labor on the farm, 
or from a long and fatiguing vacation- 
journey, or from a succession of frolics and 
"high old times," or from a long term of 
severe study just completed, is not in fit con- 
dition to begin a term of school. He should 
come rested and fresh for work and able to 
endure all the mental and physical strain 
of those hard first days. To be fagged out 
from any cause whatever when the " inex- 
orable hour " calls to the labor of opening 
and organizing a school, is to hazard the 
first conditions of success, and to invite 
certain feebleness and inefficiency at the 
very time when vigor and promptness are 
most necessary. 



CHAPTER V. 



BEGINNING. 

The beginning of any new work is always 
difficult ; it is the first step that costs ; but 
being ready to begin, ready on all points* 
is half the task of beginning already accom- 
plished. The teacher who is on hand early, 
with his license in his pocket, his plans 
made, his goal determined, his school-house 
swept and garnished, has already made an 
excellent beginning, and he has only to go on 
in the same prudent and pains-taking man- 
ner, and a good school is assured. It is 
safe to say that more failures come from 
heedless and incomplete preparation, fol- 
lowed by further embarrassments springing 
from the same cause, than from lack of in- 
tellectual ability or want of honest desire 
to do right. 

THE FIRST STEPS. 

But it is nine o'clock on the " Monday 
morning after Thanksgiving," or on what- 



WHAT FIRST? 63 

ever day school begins, and the teacher has 
been at his post half an hour or more al- 
ready. The children have been coming in 
with their books, and have been spoken to 
in turn with a word of pleasant greeting, 
and so at least the beginning of friendly 
relations has been established. Their eyes 
are quick to see that all is trim and to ob- 
serve what kind of person the teacher ap- 
pears to be. The teacher, too, is quietly 
forming provisional opinions of this one 
and that, and forecasting the probable 
management suited to one and another. 
At the instant of nine o'clock, by some 
simple call or direction school is in order, 
the pupils taking what seats they please, 
and the teacher faces his task. What is he 
to do first f A pleasant word of welcome 
to all, that all may hear his voice and know 
at once how he will address them, express- 
ing the hope and expectation that all have 
come to school to learn, and the assurance 
that, if all try to do as well as they can, 
school will be very pleasant, may be the 
wisest first exercise. Not a speech, not a 



64 BEGINNING. 

proclamation,not a declaration of education- 
al principles — nothing could be more out 
of place — but a simple, good-natured word ; 
not this, unless the teacher is able — as all 
teachers should be able — to say such a word 
neatly and briefly; and then all is ready for 
work. 

Two very obvious and fundamental prin- 
ciples should guide the teacher from the 
start ; first, the thing to be done now and 
repeated every day, is to get to vjork at 
once, as soon as the time for work comes. 
There should be no delay to consider what 
is to be done ; while the head of the school 
is considering, the body is growing uneasy 
and will very soon become disorderly : 
while the teacher is hesitating what to do, 
the pupils, noticing at once that he seems 
to be at a loss how to proceed, are already 
losing faith in him, if not instinctively get- 
ting ready to try his mettle as soon as may 
be. The teacher, to save himself, must go 
directly and firmly at the work of getting 
school into " running order." 

Second — The starting-point and ground 



MISCHIEF FOR IDLE HANDS. 65 

of all discipline for the whole term is to keep 
pupils busy. The moment school is opened 
books and slates should be called into use ; 
no school of mixed pupils can long be held 
in order if they have nothing to do, or if 
only a small part are occupied. If they, 
or a graded class, are at once made busy — 
and they can always be, if the teacher has 
judgment, energy and devices — nine tenths 
of all the sources of disorder and other dif- 
ficulties are cut off at one stroke ; all that 
remain are the exceptions to the working 
of a right general principle. 

These may at once be applied to any 
school. A graded class beginning together 
at some prescribed place can be set at a 
regular lesson ; to an ungraded school the 
teacher may say, " All who have slates and 
pencils may work the first ten miscellaneous 
examples on such, or such, a page of their 
arithmetics, that I may see how you cipher ; 
the others may read over to themselves such 
a lesson in their readers ; Willie or Kittle, 
who cannot do either, may look at the pic- 
tures in this scrap-book of mine." 



66 BEGINNING. 

Then names, ages, etc., may be rapidly 
taken by the teacher, who beckons each in 
turn to his desk, or passes around the room 
for the purpose, and at the same time 
notices dispositions and movements here 
and there. So simple a thing as this may 
be done in a way to introduce disorder at 
once. If the teacher should sit at his desk 
and call each one to give his name aloud, 
confusion would almost certainly arise, be- 
cause some names would be misunderstood, 
the spelling of others would be uncertain, 
and occasionally a child is very timid about 
giving its name. The necessary repeti- 
tions and corrections would tempt some to 
make sport for the others. This kind of 
disorder would be anticipated by the way 
suggested, or in case of other schools, by 
each pupil's writing his name, etc., on slips 
of paper distributed. It is not so much 
the intention even to suggest ways of doing 
all these little things, as to urge upon the 
young teacher the fact that he must think 
in what way he can do them most conven- 
iently, rapidly and completely. He can 



CLASSIFICATION. 6t 

have ways of doing all these without becom- 
ing a compound of hobbies, or else he is 
not capable of making these arrangements 
at all. At the same time he can ask each 
what studies he thinks he would like to- 
have, and whereabout in each he thinks he 
is, and thus as he goes along can make a 
rough classification, so far as the pupils' 
account of themselves goes. Meantime, if 
the occupation assigned to any needs chang- 
ing, this should be done. 

These necessary statistics being col- 
lected, the main work begins, that of classi- 
fying the school. So much of the efficien- 
cy of any school depends on this, and so 
much of the weakness and partial failure 
of many beginners is due to mistakes here, 
that it is necessary to state next some 

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CLASSIFICATION. 

1. Recitations and study, including 
under these terms all direct contact between 
teacher and pupil, and of both with their 
books or other means of study, are the 
chief business of school, and should, there- 



68 BEGINNING. 

fore, occupy as much of the time as possi- 
ble, and to this end all other arrangements 
should be made. 

2. There should be, within reasonable 
limit, as few classes as possible, that there 
may be as much time for each as can be 
bad. It is far better to give twenty or 
thirty minutes to a class of ten, than to 
give the same time to two or three classes 
of three to live pupils each. 

3. Pupils should be put into classes ac- 
cording to their knowledge, which, in mixed 
schools, should be ascertained by such ex- 
aminations, generally informal, as circum- 
stances allow. 

4. For economy of time and that the 
teacher may give proper instruction, every 
subject should be taught in classes. 

5. An ideal classification should, gener- 
ally, give way to the practical question, 
what in the circumstances is best for the 
pupil f 

6. In the last resort the teacher, of 
course, will determine what class or classes 
a pupil will be in, but he should take rea- 



DIVISION OF TIME. 69 1 

sonable pains to satisfy the pupil and the 
parent that his decision is right. 

7. While a mixed school cannot be re- 
duced to so strict an order of classes as a. 
graded school, the classification of such a 
school shows the power of the teacher, and 
when rightly made gives him his best op- 
portunity of doing good work. These 
principles will be applied further on, under 
the head, Arranging Classes. 

It is necessary to inquire next how much 
time for recitation the school-day will 
afford, after deducting what must be taken 
for other uses ; or to make a 

DIVISION OF TIME. 

The ordinary school day consisting of two* 
sessions of three hours each, there will be 
three hundred and sixty minutes in all.. 
The teacher should be at school, as a rule, 
half an hour before school time ; he is often 
obliged by the circumstances of the place, 
to remain during the noon-time intermis- 
sion, and he will generally have some nee- 



70 BEGINNING. 

•essaiy work to do after school, such, as 
■entering records, etc. The day is long 
enough for any teacher or pupil who works 
faithfully, and should not, as a rule, be ex- 
tended after school for the purpose of 
recitations. These three hundred and sixty 
minutes, then, are all the regular time for 
■school work. From this must be taken 
these items : 

Five minutes for opening in the morning 
and for closing in the afternoon. 

Five minutes for business, each half day. 

Ten minutes for recess each half day, or 
in many cases ten minutes for boys and ten 
for girls, separately. 

These require in all forty to sixty min- 
utes, and they are all necessary or very 
desirable items, though they make a formi- 
dable deduction from the total. The only 
part that can be taken for recitation is the 
time — ten minutes — for opening and clos- 
ing, and this should not be taken. [See 
■Chapter IX.] There will remain then, 
three hundred to three hundred and twenty 



DIVISION OF TIME. 71 

minutes for recitations, and this will be the 
general division of time: 

Morning. Opening, five minutes. Bus- 
iness, five minutes. Recess, ten or twenty 
minutes. Recess need not occur exactly 
in the middle of the half day ; for physi- 
ological reasons it might better be before 
the middle ; it may be any time between 
ten and eleven o'clock. Recitations, one 
hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty 
minutes ; say, ten recitations of fifteen 
minutes each [see next topic,] or four of 
twenty and four of fifteen, with ten to 
twenty minutes for the beginners or some 
necessary extra class. 

Afternoon. Business, five minutes. 

Recesses, ten or twenty minutes. Closing, 
five minutes. Recitations, same time as 

morning. 

How long a time should each recitation 
have, or rather — for that is the practical 
side of the question — how short a time may 
it have? No absolute answer can be given 
to this question, for the time must — as in 
fact it will — be regulated by circumstances. 



72 BEGINNING. 

If it is possible, no recitation in any sub- 
ject, unless some one little child must read 
by itself, or some one great child must 
parse all alone, should have less than fifteen 
minutes. Any less time seems almost 
ridiculously short, if recitation means any- 
thing but a flux of memorized words, of 
which a great number, certainly, can be 
said in less time than fifteen minutes. In 
the school-day, as provided for, there could 
be twenty to twenty-two recitations of 
fifteen minutes each. If it is possible 
to make fewer classes and give each, or 
even some, twenty minutes, much would 
be gained every way. It will, probably > 
be more helpful to most teachers of mixed 
schools to suggest fifteen minutes as the 
standard length, as that is a longer time 
than many now see the way of getting. 
Fifteen minutes, then, let it be, where it 
cannot be twenty. 

WHAT IS TO BE TAUGHT. 

The number of subjects to be taught 
enters into the organization of school and 
must be briefly considered, although it is 



WHICH STUDIES % 73 

not now the object to discuss courses of 
study. Singularly enough, neither statute 
nor local law prescribe, with any deiinite- 
ness or uniformity, what the subjects of 
study in a common school shall be. In 
point of fact these embrace almost all that 
are pursued in any school. Teachers do 
not want the reputation of not being able 
to teach Algebra and Natural Philosophy 
and Physiology, and the few who are 
ambitious of doing, or perhaps competent 
to do, more than the others, tax the labor 
of the teacher and the time of the school 
disproportionately, if not unjustly. The 
question is not now raised,. of the relative 
value of Grammar and Physiology, but 
only whether the common ungraded school 
should be exclusively or mainly occupied 
with those branches which it is assumed all 
will study, and whether it should admit 
those also which are generally considered 
as higher, and which are desired in these 
schools by a few pupils for this very reason. 
No other answer can be given than this : 
the common branches, the rudiments of all 



74 BEGINNING. 

knowledge, should be first and fully pro- 
vided for ; that is clearly the business of 
the school; the Reading of the younger 
classes, and the Geography if it can be 
taught sensibly, and the Penmanship, and 
the Language should not be neglected in 
any way or degree that one, or three, may 
study Algebra and Philosophy. If any 
thing is to be excluded for want of time, 
if any thing is to find its time and oppor- 
tunity as it can, it should be, clearly, the 
branches which are regarded as higher, be- 
cause the common school is established and 
maintained for instruction in those lower 
branches which all are supposed to need. 
It may be best to provide for the other, 
but not at the expense of these ; if the 
time of school is fully occupied with these 
common studies, Algebra and Philosophy 
must be relegated to odd minutes, to a lit- 
tle time before school or after, to " noon- 
time," or to whatever spare moments or 
outside time the teacher can find for them, 
or be discarded altogether. The tradi- 
tional " three It's " must in no case permit 



WHICH STUDIES? 75 

higher branches to usurp their time and 
attention. But some things not always in- 
cluded should always come in as part of 
these commonest lessons for all pupils 
whomsoever. The intention is not to make 
new courses of study, but to ascertain how 
the subjects which are demanded and which 
the school will pursue, whether the particu- 
lar teacher thinks they should be taught or 
not, and those besides which clearly must 
be added to make others effective or to sup- 
ply fresh and growing demands, can be 
provided for. Among the latter, should, 
without doubt, be reckoned Drawing, His- 
tory and Government of the United States, 
and a knowledge of what is now going on 
tn the world, the use of language and of all 
knowledge acquired in the practice of com- 
position writing, and the rudiments of some 
natural science. It is fairly a question 
whether the last three are not worth more 
in every way to the pupil than technical 
Grammar and catechetical Geography ; it is 
not a question that the common school, the 
only school a vast majority of the land will 



76 BEGINNING. 

ever attend, should give attention to them y 
if the pupils who leave these schools are to 
take anything away but the dry bones of a 
little memorized technical knowledge. 
But leaving in all that former theories of 
education still retain and adding the min- 
imum of what the newer theories and prac- 
tices properly demand, the teacher must 
recognize and provide for this curriculum, 
viz. Reading, Spelling, Geography, Gram- 
mar, History and Government, Drawing 
and Penmanship, Language or Composi- 
tion, and a Natural Science. A Natural 
Science is said, because it may be one or 
another according to circumstances, the 
main thing being that in some direction 
children should be led to observe and study 
and love nature. The way is now clear to 
apply all this to 

ARRANGING CLASSES. 

All were left just now at work at some- 
thing which will help to show the place to 
which each belongs. - Those who have 
done the most advanced set of examples in 



ARRANGING CLASSES. 77 

arithmetic may be called out and their work 
inspected, and they may be further tested by 
questioning or by other examples to be 
solved. The same may be done with the 
part who have worked the other set of ex- 
amples. Aiming at two classes in arithme- 
tic for all but beginners, all who should 
begin somewhere near the middle of the 
book might be in one, and all who should 
begin just after the " ground rules " in 
another. In the main this could easily be 
done, but a few of the first would insist on 
being in the " back part " of the book and 
a few of the second on beginning at the 
middle. Here are the two points ; there 
cannot be so many classes, and the pupils 
must be satisfied, if they can be. They may 
be convinced by repeated trials, that they 
do not understand thoroughly what is nec- 
essary for beginning where they desire ; 
they may be made to see that they can 
learn so much more in class than they can 
in scattered, individual study without recit- 
ing ; they may be persuaded to make the 
trial and convince themselves that they be- 



Y8 BEGINNING. 

long exactly where the teacher's judgment 
puts them ; and, if need be, they can in the 
end he put there. In most mixed, rural 
schools, no violence will be done by put- 
ting all who have previously ciphered into 
two classes, and the beginners, or those who 
ought to be beginners, into a third. 

Those who are to study Grammar and 
Geography may be tested and divided in 
the same way. It will always be easier to 
make a small number of classes in these 
subjects than in others. The grammari- 
ans will readily fall into the ranks of begin- 
ners and advanced. Those who ought to 
study home Geography, or that of the 
United States, will properly go into one 
class, and those who ought to study some 
other country, into another. 

Reading and Spelling classes make diffi- 
culty because children and their parents so 
foolishly insist on using the higher readers, 
and because the notion prevails that there 
must be as many spelling classes as reading 
classes. In very few schools can the 
children read profitably in readers higher 



ARRANGING CLASSES. 79 

than the fourth of the ordinary series, and 
teachers can do no better service in this 
subject than to pursuade, or if need be 
gently compel, pupils and parents to be 
satisfied with a reader of that grade. With 
a full understanding of the difficulties in- 
volved, there is no hesitation in saying that 
the teacher would better do some violence 
in this matter and reject the books above 
this. Thus there would be only four read- 
ing classes beyond the beginners. 

It is worth serious consideration whether 
all learning of Spelling should not be inci- 
dental to other lessons ; that is, whether set 
lessons in spelling should be given for 
the sake of spelling. If, however, the 
common way of dictating spelling lessons 
is to be followed, as it is almost universally, 
aside from what spelling will almost of 
necessity be done with other classes, — and 
spelling should be practised in them all, as 
occasion arises — the whole school, with the 
exception again of the beginners, may be 
divided into two classes, and with better 
results than if there are more than two. 



80 BEGINNING. 

The most advanced half of the school may 
be in one, and the rest in the other. If 
any in either should, so far as spelling goes, 
be in the other, they can easily enough be 
transferred. Half the school may just as 
well spell in one class as to be divided into 
two or more ; indeed, if there is any merit 
/in oral spelling, or in writing words dic- 
tated, the more the class does, the more the 
individual pupil hears or does himself, and 
so he has a better chance than he would 
have in a small class. The lesson, whether 
from a spelling book or elsewhere, can very 
easily be made suitable for each of these 
two divisions. If any says that his school 
is too large to spell in this way, as there is 
no place in the room for so many to stand, 
it is obvious to say that standing in a row 
is no necessary part of a spelling lesson, 
more than of any other ; the class can sit 
in their seats, and the one who is to spell 
can rise, if that is desirable, or all can 
write together, no matter how many there 
are. 

As to Penmanship ; all can write at once, 



ARRANGING CLASSES. 81 

two, or possibly three, books of 'the ordi- 
nary series, being sufficient for the best 
interests of most schools. The Drawing, 
also, can be very well managed in one 
class, the teacher giving instruction on the 
board one day to those who are doing cer- 
tain work while the others are practising 
yesterday's lesson. A part of the time 
being so devoted to lessons in advance for 
some part of the class, the rest of the time 
can be spent in inspecting and correcting 
the work of individuals. These two sub- 
jects may alternate, if it is necessary that 
any should. 

The Language or Composition, like the 
Spelling, will need two classes, but a little 
practice and ordinary devices will soon en- 
able the teacher to get the right kind of 
work from half the school at a time. 

History and Government together, either 
connecting the two in one lesson or alternat- 
ing them by half-terms, maybe subjects for 
one class, the older half of the school ; or, 
which would be better, they may be sub- 



82 BEGINNING. 

jects for part of the instruction in the gen- 
eral exercise. [See Chapter VII.] 

The Science lesson will need one recita- 
tion period by itself or with other subjects 
in the general exercise, but it should be 
with the school as a class, each one, young 
and old, getting what he can from it. 

The general scheme of classes aimed at 
in this discussion would be something like 
this. 

Arithmetic, three classes ; 

Grammar, two classes ; 

Geography, two classes ; 

Beading, four classes ; [there should be 

three, if possible.] 

Spelling, two classes ; 

Penmanship and Drawing, one class ; 

Language, two classes ; 

History, with or without Government, 
one class ; 

Science, one class ; 

In all, eighteen classes. 

This scheme does not provide for the 
little ones, whose lessons should be short 
and frequent. Half an hour's time is left 



ARRANGING CLASSES. 83'. 

left for them, and this can be supplemented, 
perhaps doubled, by making assistant 
teachers for a few minutes each half day of 
the older pupils. This is not suggested 
with the thought that the instruction of 
the little ones is to be in any sense neglect- 
ed. The" teacher will give to them all the 
time he can,and they will receive this further 
instruction under his own constant notice 
by the plan proposed. In summer schools 
composed of young children only, there 
might be but one class in Arithmetic, none 
in Grammar, and so on. In these schools 
there would be longer time for class exer- 
cises, or they could be more frequent, and. 
there would be opportunity for much oral 
instruction and much practice of writing 
and drawing. The particulars would vary,, 
but the principle of the arrangement would 
apply, now in this way and now in that, to- 
all schools. 

No attempt is made here to fix the pre- 
cise number of classes for any school ; cir- 
cumstances vary so much that this would 
be impossible. The young teacher is only 



84 



BEGINNING. 



urged to make the number of classes small 
by ever j- device, so that the time for reci- 
tations may be most profitably employed. 
He must control and jpersuade and compel 
pupils to come together into classes, that he 
may have opportunity to instruct them. 
It is simple nonsense to have recitations of 
two to three minutes in length ; and it 
■shows want of resources or feebleness of 
power, if a teacher allows a school of twenty- 
seven pupils to demand twenty-eight daily 
classes, as in one instance known to the au- 
thor. Nor can any absolute length of recita- 
tion be prescribed ; it is not the present 
'Object to give exact formulas for managing 
schools but to suggest principles. 

This matter of classes is often the great- 
est difficulty, for teachers of ungraded 
schools, and this is the excuse, if any is 
needed, for dwelling upon it with repeti- 
tion and emphasis. Sometimes variety of 
text-books is at the bottom of it, but in 
most places now the proper authorities will 
remedy this if the teacher judiciously and 
resolutely demands it ; it arises sometimes 



ARRANGING CLASSES. 85» 

from the older pupils' having been pre- 
viously permitted to take up studies and 
advanced parts of subjects for which they 
were not qualified, and of course it requires 
much tact and firmness to bring together 
again what ought never to have been scat- 
tered ; it arises most often from the present 
teacher's own lack of apprehension of the 
evils of numerous small classes with but 
three to five minutes for each, and his al- 
lowing two or three here, and two or three 
there, to form a class contrary to his judg- 
ment, because he would like to please or 
because he has not courage to resist impro- 
tunities. 

Once again, every young teacher who 
reads this chapter is urged in those first 
days of school to apply himself vigorously to 
the task of reducing the number of classes 
by hunching the pupils together. Persuade 
or compel those great boys and girls, who 
can hardly read at all and think their size 
demands the fifth reader, the sixth reader, 
the rhetorical reader, to come together on 
the fourth, and as a solace to their disap- 



$6 , BEGLNTSING. 

pointed ambition let the teacher's news- 
paper, or magazine, or history or other 
book, supplement sometimes, or many 
times, the despised reader. Bring together 
all those mathematical geniuses, who want 
to cipher all over the last half of the arith- 
metic and the elementary algebra, at some 
point most suitable for the larger part of 
them, and let the best help the poorest 
catch up, and stimulate all by giving such 
additional work as they can bear. Put 
those who, in like manner, have scattered 
themselves over the first part of the book 
together, and pure beginners will make 
another class. If it is best or necessary to 
study intellectual arithmetic, the very best 
use to make of it is as a two minutes' drill 
introductory to each lesson in written 
arithmetic. The assertion is made confi- 
dently, that any teacher who really sees its 
necessity and will work patiently at it will 
very much reduce the number of classes. 
He must begin with resolution and he must 
improve every opportunity of condensing 
*classses, and he must make it apparent to 



ARRANGING CLASSES. 87 

scholars, and all parents who will take 
pains to know, that his recitations from 
fifteen to twenty minutes in length are 
worth ten times as much as those of three 
to five minutes, which are really no recita- 
tions at all and are hardly worth reckoning 
as pretences. This course is not meant at 
all to lessen the teacher's labor — it will not 
do that — but to make it more useful. 

To prevent all misapprehension and the 
charge of making an ideal scheme which 
cannot be carried out as a real scheme in 
any school, it is repeated that it is 
meant to be tentative only, and suggestive 
of what may be done in the main in any 
ordinary school of from twenty-five to forty, 
or even more pupils, and it should he done. 
It is high time that the puttering and 
wasting of strength in the farce of a three 
minutes' recitation should be peremptorily 
stopped, and that " it can't be done " 
should be replaced by a vigorous, " it shall 
he done" There need be no reserve in 
saying that no teacher can hear, to any 
profit, more classes than these, and that no 



88 BEGINNING. 

ordinary recitation period can be shorter 
than the fifteen minutes here specified as a 
minimum. 

Graded schools, following a prescribed 
course of study and being classified ac- 
cording to that course, present no special 
difficulties to the individual teacher in this 
matter. Conditions of promotion and forms 
of examination are fixed by the Principal 
or Board of Education, and the teacher's 
part is simply to carry out instructions. 

To come back to the getting of this par- 
ticular school into working order. There 
are to be only as few classes as possible in. 
each subject. By trial of those who are to 
study each subject, as suggested , for those 
in arithmetic, and trials in as many parts 
of the subject as may be necessary, a pro- 
visional classification may be made on the 
first day, while all are kept busy by being 
told that they will be examined in this 
way in this subject first and in that next. 

What then has been done this first day ? 
A provisional classification has been made 
according to a principle which will be car- 



ARRANGING CLASSES. 89 

ried out as far as seems practicable, and on 
a basis which none can reasonably object 
to, viz. this informal trial of each pupil in 
each subject ; all have been kept busy, the 
teacher most of all, and work for the next 
day has been given. During the day, as 
occasion has arisen, the teacher has gently 
but firmly asserted his mastership and has 
at once taken control of his school and has 
shown the way in which he means to man- 
age. A word, and notice what lessons 
will be heard first in the morning, may 
dismiss the school. 

Once again, some man may say, " this is 
all very well to read, but schools don't be- 
gin in that way." These suggestions are 
not made for any whose experience per- 
mits them to do better, or for those who 
are sure they will do best by not knowing 
how they will proceed ; nor is it supposed 
that any will follow these suggestions 
exactly and go no step beyond. Full de- 
tails are not attempted ; every work-man 
must provide for little things, in which his 
work is sure to differ from that of any 



90 BEGINNING. 

other man. For the benefit of those who 
do not know a better way, and on the sure 
ground that any sensible plan of opening 
school is better than no plan at all, this prin- 
ciple and these details so far are written 
out at some length. Unless the young 
teacher can do better, he will do well to 
do this. 

If the work here given cannot all be 
done in one day, let two days be taken ; 
the precise time is not essential. The 
main thing is to know what one means to 
accomplish and the law by which he ought 
to work it out ; and if any one says he can- 
not do this or something like it, it is a con- 
fession of weakness which will probably 
belong to all he does. But let it be noticed 
that the judgment used in this day's work 
and the value and safety of its results will 
depend largely on the teacher's meeting the 
conditions already laid down in the intro- 
ductory chapters. 

School, then, is dismissed at the close of 
the first day with classes formed, except in 
some doubtful and deferred instances, and 



THE DAILY PROGRAMME. 91 

with lessons for the first part of the next 
day. This provisional and tentative classi- 
fication is completed and corrected, if need 
be, on the following day, and the school is 
ready for the 

PROGRAMME OF RECITATION AND STUDY. 

These principles should guide in the 
making of a programme. 

1. Periods of study and recitation for 
classes, and so far as possible for individu- 
als, should alternate. 

2. Exercises which relieve by requiring 
more bodily movement or manual practice, 
such as drawing, or reading accompanied 
with vocal gymnastics of any kind, should 
be put at times when this relief will be 
most needed, as in the middle of sessions, 
or toward the end of the day. 

3. In general, classes should come in such 
order as will keep pupils busy but will 
afford rest and stimulus by frequent change 
of occupation or subject. The inevitable 
uneasiness of a school in which this princi- 
ple is disregarded is proof that all such 
points should influence all arrangements. 



92 BEGINNING. 

4. In consideration of the fact that the 
teacher is bound to continued exertion, and 
so the strain on body and mind is great, 
secondary regard should be paid to such an 
order of exercises as will also relieve him, 
as far as is consistent with the interests of 
classes. 

5. It is very common to say that the 
most difficult subjects, those which require 
" most attention and hardest work " should 
come first, because the mind is then freshest, 
and the almost universal practice puts 
arithmetic into this place of honor, with 
the exception, sometimes, of the reading 
classes. This is an error ; all the subjects 
of study — grammar, arithmetic, geography, 
history, science — require close, and equally 
close attention ; arithmetic is not, gener- 
ally, the most difficult; it is made the 
hobby of much teaching and the . standard 
of promotion, until algebra supersedes it, 
but if any subject should be put first for 
this reason, it should, clearly, be grammar ; 
but it is neither correct nor politic to 
arrange order of classes on this principle, 



THE DAILY PROGRAMME. 93 

for all subjects should receive equally earn- 
est attention and should be made equal 
stimulants of the mind. The other con- 
siderations mentioned should have prece- 
dence over this. 

6. This programme should fill the time 
of the sessions, and should control the 
action of the school. It may, of course, be 
changed for cause, but it should be made 
to be followed till it is changed, and both 
teacher and pupil should live their school 
life by it. Let it be plainly written out 
and posted and then let it be followed. 
This is best for the school as a school, and 
the lesson of it is invaluable in all after 
life. 

7. Besides the programe of recitations, 
there should also be a programme of study, 
and for two reasons. The teacher should 
know whether a pupil's time is fully occu- 
pied and whether he can prepare the lessons 
assigned. That is, the teacher should know 
just where the work he requires is to come 
in. Secondly, the habit of having a 
time for every part of his work, and of do- 



94 BEGINNING. 

ing each part in its own time, is a habit to- 
be cultivated. It is advised, then, that a 
programme of study be made out for each 
class, that it be posted and followed in the 
same manner as that of recitations. The 
pupils then have a regular occupation — 
recitation of such a lesson or study of such 
a lesson — for each period of the day. If 
any prepare any lessons out of school, it is 
better that this too be regularly done, and 
be the same lesson every day. Pupils can 
be advised at least to take this course. 

With these considerations about pro- 
grammes the matter is left with- the teacher. 
Each can best make his own particular 
order of exercises. If only the young 
teacher will accustom himself from the 
start to seek after the best way and to de- 
cide on each part of his own mode of pro- 
ceedure for reasons satisfactory to him in 
present circumstances, he is better off with- 
out exact formulas for doing everything. 
The data of the formulas he needs being 
suggested, he can best apply them to his 
own case for himself. 



SEATING. 95 

The only remaining item is that of 

SEATING. 

In graded schools the classification deter- 
mines the general order of sitting ; that is, 
the school sits by classes. The same rule 
prevails in mixed schools ; that is, pupils 
should sit by classes, so far as that can be 
done. Pupils who have different ranks in 
different subjects may conveniently sit with 
the highest class in any subject to which 
they belong. Assuming that this general 
principle will regulate the seating of a 
school, these suggestions are added : 

1. Some idea in the teacher's mind of 
appearance, or order, or convenience for 
the various school movements, or the height 
of seats and desks, will determine whether 
a particular class shall sit here or there. 
That is, there will be a reason, satisfactory 
to the teacher, for putting a class where it 
is placed. 

2. Whether boys and s;irls in the same 
class will be seated in the same row of 
seats, or in one section of a long seat 



96 BEGINNING. 

running round the wall, or whether all the 
boys shall be together in one half of the 
seats or benches, and all the girls on the 
other, will not be determined, of necessity, 
by their being boys and girls, but by rela- 
tive number of pupils and seats, and 
by the considerations mentioned above. 
These ideas should be carried out rather 
than whims about sex. 

3. The seats of individuals of a class will 
be determined by considerations not always 
to be made public. Sometimes they may 
be seated so as to make a regular gradation 
of height, for appearence's sake, provided 
no more important principle is sacrificed. 
Sometimes the unruly ones, after they are 
discovered, are put in front because they 
are unruly. Sometimes, the privilege of 
choosing seats may be allowed, with the un- 
derstanding that retaining them depends on 
behavior. Sometimes, rank in class, when 
it is ascertained, determines seat and with 
good effect in certain teachers' manage- 
ment, though this is not recommended as a 
good general rule. Sometimes, " good 



SEATING. 



97 



looks " or the contrary, have something to 
do with it, and not without reason, and 
sometimes, considerations of personal clean- 
liness or known habits which cannot be 
made a matter of direct school discipline 
properly and imperatively determine it. 
Here again the young teacher is recom- 
mended to act on the assumption that he 
may control this matter as all others, and 
to regulate it positively and so as to meet 
some idea of order and convenience, or 
keeping certain pupils out of each other's 
reach ; that is, he should do it by authority 
and for reason. Nor is this a thing of no 
importance, in either graded or ungraded 
schools. Willie Jones and his mother and 
Kitty- Sawyer and her father often have no- 
tions of their own about seats, which the 
teacher would be glad enough to gratify if 
he could. 

4. Some other considerations, however, 
should come in to modify the foregoing, 
and. such as are too apt to be overloked. 

(a.) Children should not sit on seats or at 
desks too high or too low for them. No 



98 BEGINNING. 

child should sit from opening of school to 
recess with feet swinging clear of the floor, 
or crouching down to meet his desk. This, 
more than any notion of looks, order, or 
convenience, should determine the seats of 
some. 

(b.) There are in most rooms seats of 
especial exposure to drafts of cold air, 
blasts of hot air, and painful glare of light, 
and there are children peculiarly sensitive 
to such things. Some boys do not know 
there is a draft, and some girls are salaman- 
ders as to stoves and registers ; careful re- 
gard should sometimes be paid to such 
things, both on occasion and as a permanent 
arrangement. 

(<?.) Personal and family antipathies 
should sometimes be recognized. Of course, 
the teacher cannot always, or even gener- 
ally, know or pay any attention to feuds of 
any sort, and yet he may sometimes avoid 
making trouble for himself in school by not 
compelling pupils, who represent this feud, 
to that direct personal contact in the same 



SEATING. 99 

seat for six hours a day which is avoided 
every where else. 

(d.) The temperament and disposition of 
pupils should have something to do with 
all arrangements for children. So far as 
school order goes, seating pupils so that 
they will neutralize each other in some re- 
spects is sometimes prudent, at least to the 
extent of not putting together the two boys 
or girls most likely to make disturbance, 
unless, indeed, the teacher may think it best 
to concentrate all tendency to disorder in 
one section of the room. It is not meant 
that a very bad girl should be seated by a 
very good one ; that often makes just cause 
of complaint ; but that pupils should be so 
seated as not to provoke each other to dis- 
orders which either might not- originate 
somewhere else. Removal from the special 
temptation which comes from sitting too- 
near another repository of kindred mischief 
is sometimes prudent and right. 

If some think that too much space has 
been given to so purely technical a thing as 
seating forty or fifty pupils in a school room, 



100 BEGINNING. 

others will justify it by recollecting the 
petty trials which mistakes in this little 
thing have caused them. 

All these details of beginning, studies, 
classes, programme, seating, are now ar- 
ranged provisionally ; they may be modi- 
fied as new circumstances appear ; but 
within a week of opening they should all 
be settled for the term and every thing be 
in good working order. Other pupils 
coming in must fall into the order estab- 
lished ; there is no other way to do ; the 
school cannot be reorganized' to meet de- 
mands of irregulars and stragglers. 

The next thing is to carry on the school 
for a day. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE ROUTINE OF SCHOOL. 

The organization of school being com- 
pleted by working out the principles sug- 
gested in the preceding chapter, the next 
point to be considered is the daily routine 
of school, or each day^s " school-keeping." 
These principles are suggested as guides 
for the daily ordering of school. It should 
be noted, that what is generally called gov- 
ernment or discipline is not now meant, 
but rather what goes by the somewhat op- 
probrious name of machinery. This, in 
right degree and form, is always necessary, 
and if properly ordered is a valuable con- 
tribution to discipline, though it is rather 
the formal and external movement of a 
school than its real government. 

1. The common business mottoes, a time 
and place for every thing and everything in 



102 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

■in its time and place, and let every one 
mind his own business, are as necessary 
and as useful in school as elsewhere. 

2. Every regulation, and every move- 
ment, is to accomplish some part of the 
general result of order and efficiency in the 

: school ; nothing is to be done without some 
object distinct to the teacher's mind. 

3. The needs, comfort and efficiency of 
the school are of far greater importance 
than the minute and over-particular order- 
ing of every detail according to some stand- 
ard of personal f ussiness. 

4. There should be as little apparent 
machinery as possible, and the obvious de- 
sign of all should be to promote proper or- 
der, to save time, or to enforce practice of 
right habits. 

5. The school room is never to be made a 
place of rudeness, noise or disorder ; it 
should, at all times, be a place of study, or 
of regular exercise, such as calisthenics, or 
of quiet recreation. 

6. In short, all the movements of the 
school should tend, not to a burdensome 



BEFORE SCHOOL. 103 

system of school tactics and exercises, as if 
school were for the sake of its maneuvres, 
but to keep the school in orderly and useful 
progress from the beginning to the close of 
each session. 

The presumption is that the teacher is to 
know personally every morning that all 
things are in readiness, and, as a rule, 
there himself before any pupil. What 
shall be the 

ORDER BEFORE SCHOOL ? 

It might be unlimited license to do as 
pupils choose, or it might be the order re- 
quired in school hours. There are objec- 
tions to both, and a just medium between 
the two is better. There should, clearly, 
be no lounging or loafing with caps on or 
hands in pockets, or pushing rudely about, 
and it is not necessary to make the school 
a place to be shunned, except when pupils 
are obliged to be in it, by over-strictness of 
regulation. This might properly be the 
fashion of it : "quiet entry at any time, with 
cap, shawls, etc., deposited in proper place, 



104 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

general permission to talk with each other 
and with the teacher ; no leaving the room 
or house without permission ; of course in 
winter free access to the stove, etc., but ab- 
solutely no pushing or crowding; encour- 
agement to spend the time in study, or in 
conversation about studies and school. 
Much is. gained if the school room comes 
to be a place of free intercourse, restrained 
only by the pupil's own growing sense of 
propriety and necessary checks by the 
teacher as occasion requires. It is not a 
point to be despised in education, if for this 
little time in the morning, pupils can be 
allowed considerable liberty and yet main- 
tain an unforced respect for the place 
and the purpose of meeting, and if there 
can prevail among the pupils and between 
pupils and teacher a polite freedom of in- 
tercourse. Of course, the teacher must be 
master here, as in all; he must at once 
check all undue noise, the unruliness of in- 
dividuals must be subdued, and the desired 
decorum of all maintained. As a great 
help to all this, the teacher might make it 



RECORD OF ATTENDANCE. 105 

his business to show or to do something 
which would interest or 'instruct, like curi- 
osities of any kind, simple experiments in 
physics, or to make this the regular time 
for giving assistance to pupils who need it. 
This would have a wonderful influence on 
punctuality. 

At nine o'clock, precisely, or one minute 
"before, school is called to order by some 
simple signal ; a single stroke of a bell is 
most convenient; or, if there is no bell, a 
single rap on the desk. If some are still 
out of doors, a signal must be given where 
they should hear it. Not more than one 
minute is needed for getting to seats with 
desks closed, and into that degree of order 
which belongs to the school as a whole. 

RECORD OF ATTENDANCE. 

Attendance may be taken best the mo- 
ment school is called to order. It is not 
necessary to consume time in doing this. 
Teachers have their own way, but as sim- 
ple a plan as any is this ; put the names of 
convenient parts of the school — one row of 



106 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

seats, one side of the school-house — on 
slips of paper which are placed on the first 
desk of a row or first seat of a division just 
before school begins ; at a sign or motion of 
the teacher the pupils sitting in these seats 
rise and check the names of absent scholars, 
and put the slips back upon their desks to 
be collected after opening, or at some more 
convenient time, and brought to the teacher's 
desk, who makes the entry in his record 
after school, This will not generally occupy 
more than fifteen seconds, taking much less 
time and making less confusion than call- 
ing the roll by name or numbers. This can 
be repeated, if it is necessary or required 
to take this account more than once a day. 

OPENING EXERCISES 

immediately follow. Of these it is obvious 
to say they should be short, simple, and 
such as all, or very nearly all, can take 
part in, and all should be required to take 
part, unless for cause. Whether they 
should be religious or not, depends on cir- 
cumstances. There should be no doubt 
that the reading of a few verses of scrip- 



OPENING EXERCISES. 107 

ture by the teacher, or by the teacher or 
pupils, responsively, and the saying of the 
Lord's prayer in unison, preceded or not 
by the teacher's offering a short prayer, is 
a right and a helpful opening of any school, 
if it is done in a right manner and spirit, and 
if there is no considerable opposition to 
such an opening among the parents. The 
young teacher is advised with all serious- 
ness to open his school in this way if he 
himself believes in it, and there is no 
positive objection on the ground of un- 
friendly or divided views of religion. But 
if it is to be a form only on the part of the 
teacher, if parents oppose it, or if the school 
is in a condition to make it undesirable, it 
would far better be omitted ; it would be 
better omitted, unless for the given teacher 
and the given school it serves some real 
purpose as a school exercise. If these exer- 
cises are religious, the lesson of scripture 
should be short, and should be, generally, 
from the Old Testament history, the 
Psalms, or the Gospels ; and the prayer, 
aside from the Lord's prayer, should be a 



108 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

school prayer, not one for a conference 
meeting or for Sunday service. 

In case the opening exercises are not 
religious, some other may be substituted. 
It is pleasant and gives the day a good 
start, and it is therefore desirable for all, 
teacher included, to do the same thing for 
five minutes. It almost takes the place of a 
family's getting together round the break- 
fast table for a school, as a whole, to do 
something pleasant, as a set-off for the 
day. All feel better for it, and all take 
more kindly to their work after, and from, 
this beginning. Five minutes' reading 
from a good book, five minutes' singing, a 
series of brief accounts of great men by 
the teacher, carefully prepared, so as to be 
entertaining and instructive, and easily 
remembered, the news of the day — any of 
these and many more may make a good 
substitute for religious exercises, provided 
the teacher makes them mean something, 
and so makes them contribute some good 
to all the school. 



THE MORNING SESSION. 109 

Following the programme already made 
out, the next item is the necessary 

BUSINESS OF THE MORNING. 

If any general directions are to be given, 
the best time is immediately after the 
opening, before books are taken. These 
may include anything about lessons, an 
opportunity to ask questions — and by a 
week's proper dealing, a school will learn 
what questions should be asked at such a 
time — a word about behavior, appointments 
to any special duties, as to open windows 
at recess, to hear a class of little children 
read, etc. If there is nothing to be said 
or done in which all are concerned, 
books are taken at a signal, and for the 
school there are five minutes of study 
before recitations begin, while the teacher 
is attending to little matters with indi- 
viduals. All the miscellaneous chores for 
the half day should be done in these five 
minutes, so that no time may be lost from 
recitations. There will generally be busi- 
ness enough to use the full time ; a child 
absent yesterday will need to know what 



110 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

the day's lessons are, and to give account 
of his absence ; another will need an extra 
minute's help about his lesson ; another to 
be asked about some written exercise he 
was to bring in, etc. All these little mat- 
ters being disposed of, there is nothing but 
the recesses in the way of solid work with 
classes for the morning. That work 
should suffer no interruption from leaving 
seats, asking questions, or other preventible 
source. 

CALLING AND DISMISSING CLASSES. 

For recitation classes should sit together, 
as a matter of course. If the scholars sit by 
classes in rows of seats, they may recite 
from their seats. In this case, all that is 
necessary is that at the signal the class 
should be in order for recitation. But 
there should be a uniform order, understood 
and required ; e. g., desks cleared of what 
will not be used, needed books, paper, etc., 
ready, places found, etc. If pupils are not 
seated in classes, or for other reasons have 
to be called together, there should, of 
course, be a place for recitations, and there 



CALLING CLASSES. Ill* 

should be an order of coming and going. 
This is a very simple thing to say, but not 
so easy a thing to do. The object is to get 
a certain number of boys and girls quickly 
and quietly to a certain part of the school- 
room in readiness to recite, and back again 
in readiness to study. A simple and rapid 
way is to say, next class, or A class — at 
which the class gets ready to start, the 
pupils knowing what getting ready in- 
cludes — stand — the pupils knowing what 
that includes — and pass. In dismissing 
classes, it is enough to give the same orders, 
ready, stand, _pass. The stroke of a bell, 
or a motion from a teacher may be sub- 
stituted ; the particular way is not essential, 
but it is at least better that so simple a 
thing should be regulated. The burden of 
the day's work need not consist of march- 
ing and countermarching, but the regulat- 
ing power of the teacher is shown in the 
compactness, convenience, orderliness, and 
time-saving promptness of such movements. 
Getting to and from classes in a mixed 
school, or in schools with recitation rooms 



112 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

attached, especially if they are on different 
floors, requires a power of arranging and 
controlling which is not always exhibited. 
It is also school discipline, as far as it goes, 
and not useless discipline for after life, to 
rise and stand properly, to walk as men 
and women walk, to get up from a seat 
without swinging up on one heel and one 
hand, to go up and down stairs without 
tumbling over some one. It is proper, and 
not a needless waste of time in puttering 
and fussing, to insist again and again that 
boys and girls shall carry books in a way 
not outlandish, and not carry pencils 
sticking out of mouth, and not walk with 
eyes out of window or up at ceiling, or 
in other ways appear awkward or gawky. 
And all these regulated school movements 
should contribute something to these ends. 

RECESSES. 

Recesses are the most difficult part of 
school routine. That they cannot be dis- 
pensed with, is certain ; that pupils should 
not simply be turned out or let out into the 



RECESSES. 113 

yard to do just what they will, while 
recesses should be times of freedom and 
recreation, is equally certain. That they 
bring only a change of work to the teacher, 
is known to any who have made trial of 
teaching. 

Where both parts of a school can have 
recess together, all should pass out in such 
order as is convenient, but in order; win- 
dows should be raised for a thorough ven- 
tilation of the room, which, together with 
closing at the proper time, may be entrusted 
to pupils appointed ; as a rule the teacher 
should also go out, both for the sake of 
fresh air and for the purpose of knowing 
what is going on on the play-ground and 
in the out-buildings, and he should take 
such exercise as circumstances will allow. 

Recess should be at least ten minutes in 
length ; fifteen minutes from the time of 
starting to the time of being in order in 
seats is not too long. The teacher who can 
suggest and help in suitable games and 
play will do much good ; he will at least 



114 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

prevent rough and boisterous ones. He 
will not need to join in them, as some 
do, but no harm will come from occasional 
participation in some of them. At any 
rate, he should encourage the children to 
active exercise, and to play their play out 
at recess. 

Shall all be required to stay out ot 
doors during the entire recess ? Unless 
for special reasons all should go out, and in 
good weather all should remain out as a rule; 
special permissions may be given to return, 
or general permission to pass back after 
passing out. The time spent out of doors 
may be shortened according to the weather, 
and the recess may be finished in-doors. 
Pupils should not be allowed to think they 
need any recess, or to think they do not 
want to stay out of doors in suitable 
weather, or to form little cliques to come 
in and spend the time by themselves. By 
judicious explanations and the encourage- 
ment of personal example, they should be 
taught the right use of recess and the value 



RECESSES. 115 

of out-door exercise, and to mingle freely 
with all on the play-ground. 

In stormy weather, only those who desire 
may pass out, but the teacher should judge 
when the weather is stormy. In this case, 
there should be recess in- doors. Windows 
should be opened, not so as to incur danger 
from drafts, but so that the foul air may be 
cleared out. Then some regular system of 
in-door exercise may be followed, light 
gymnastics or calisthenics. Either in doors 
or out of doors, there should be some 
exercise, and in all weather there should 
be sufficient admittance of fresh air. 
Sometimes what is called a talking recess, 
may be substituted for the gymnastic recess. 

Where boys and girls must have a separ- 
ate time for recess, the problem is more 
complicated. Double time must be taken • 
at least ten minutes must be allowed for 
each part of the school. The teacher can- 
not go out, unless he leave the part which 
remains in under the care of a monitor. 
There is difficulty about ventilation too, for 
windows cannot be opened freely when 



116 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

part are in their seats. One of two courses 
may be followed. (1.) Boys may go out 
for half the time allotted for recess, and 
girls may have recess in the house; then 
girls may go out, and boys have recess in 
the house ; and while either part is moving 
about, windows may be opened. Or, (2) 
boys and girls may have separate recess, 
the part in-doors maintaining school order, 
and a minute or two may be taken at the 
beginning or the close, when all are re- 
quired to move about, for ventilation. In 
either case, the teacher should know, 
sometimes by personal inspection, some- 
times by reports of monitors minutely 
instructed, what is going on out of doors. 

What kind of games may be allowed 
at recess ? Any that are not rough, and do 
not expose any, particularly the younger 
ones, to danger or injury, or do not so 
engage attention that pupils will not drop 
them instantly when the signal for going 
in is given, or that do not expose the 
neighbors' premises to any kind of depre- 
dation, or do not endanger school property 



RECESSES. 117 



or lawns. Of the former, snap-the-whip, 
if still practised, is an example. Of the 
second, any match game is an example, 
unless the school is so disciplined that 
they will drop it at any point on the 
instant. As a rule recesses are too short 
for any match game. Of the third, any 
thing like knocking or driving ball, which 
as often as one time in five would make it 
necessary for some boy to tumble over the 
fence into the neighbor's garden, or pear 
orchard, or front yard, after the vagrant 
missile. Of the fourth, in a small yard 
full of children, with school windows close 
by, pitching quoits or even throwing ball 
might be an example. In short, all games 
should be allowed except those whose 
prohibition is called for by the circum- 
stances of the place, or by the requirements 
of safety to person and property or for the 
sake of decorum. 

How much noise is allowable on the 
play-ground? If the school-house or 
room is sacred to quiet and gentle de- 
meanor, the play-ground is a place of 



118 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

freedom. There should be reasons for 
restraint, if any is imposed, and these may 
exist, indeed generally do exist. They are 
such as these : noise, which disturbs any 
part of the school not out at the same time ; 
noise which may properly be considered 
offensive by the neighborhood ; noise which 
is in itself, either as to kind or degree, rude 
and semi-barbarian. Screeching and yell- 
ing, just for the sake of screeching and 
yelling, would of course be restrained * as 
both senseless and ill-mannered. But ex- 
cept for reason, voice and limb should be 
free at recess, the main objects being 
fresh air, exercise, and the peaceful exor- 
cism of the spirits of noise and restlessness 
out of place. 

This further suggestion about recess is 
made ; that the younger pupils, perhaps all 
below those in the second reader, should 
have recess by themselves, and two recesses 
in each half day instead of one. The 
reasons for this are, that they cannot study 
or do any school work through all the 
hours of school, and that they would better 



RECESSES. 119 

play out of doors than to be idle or uneasy 
on their seats after attention to lessons for 
a reasonable time ; in short, they cannot 
study long at a time, and need frequent 
exercise of their limbs. In most, if not all 
schools, this can very easily be done with- 
out any interference with other classes or 
with their own progress. 

Time should not be lost after school 
comes in from recess in getting into 
order. No provision in the programme 
should ever be made for gradual resump- 
tion of work after opening, after class, or 
after recess, nor should the occasion for it 
be allowed to grow up from neglect on the 
part of either teacher or school. Signals to 
come in should be understood to be as just as 
significant and just as immediate in their 
effect as signals to go out ; and signals to 
resume books and study, as to lay them 
aside. And this can be secured by all 
teachers who know what school ou^ht to 
be, and who have strength of character to 
carry out their own regulations. Any 
school can by decisive and persevering 



120 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

effort be brought to the state of prompt 
compliance with signals ; and any school 
can very easily be allowed to fall into a lax 
and reluctant compliance with them. The 
teacher's real power is measured and shown 
quite as much in such things, as in class 
recitations. 

Work, the work which the programme 
assigns, is resumed at once after recess, and 
continues till the time of dismissal. 

NOON TIME. 

If, as in country schools,- and in some 
others, all stay with the teacher, noon- 
time becomes only a prolonged recess. 
Eating lunch, out-door play, and some 
study, are its chief variations. Of these it 
may be remarked, that the teacher's con- 
cern with lunch should be, (a) to advise 
pupils, at least, not to cram their pie and 
cake into their bodies running, and (b) that 
crumbs, pieces, or waste of any kind should 
not be scattered in the school-room or 
about the door or yard. Lunch-eating is not 
to be a class exercise, but it should be 
finished before play is begun. 



NOON TIME. . 121 

Play is better than study for noon-time, 
but in some places, it will be necessary to 
restrain violence of sport lest the first part 
of the afternoon may be worthless for 
study. And in others it may be necessary 
to put a strict embargo on certain games y 
or on such wanderings as tend to make 
return to school tardy or unwilling. Those 
who have taught country schools near a 
good place for coasting or skating, or near 
a beech-grove or huckleberry pasture, will 
understand the necessity for strict enforce- 
ment of whatever regulations seem best to 
ensure moderation in the degree and the 
time of noon-day sport. If necessary, these 
sports or distant excursions must be pro- 
hibited entirely ; before this is done, the 
alternative of return within the time, in 
proper condition for study, or certain and 
speedy prohibition, may be presented. 

As matter of course, the school-house 
should be thoroughly ventilated during the 
noon-time. 

The most difficult problem in connection 
with the noon-time, arises when part of the 



122 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

pupils remain at school and part go home, 
and the number remaining varies with 
weather and wishes, sometimes whims, of 
the pupil. These suggestions are made. 

Staying or going home should be a 
regular thing, as far as possible, that the 
teacher maj know who is on the premises 
and who is away, and lists of the two 
should be kept. 

Staying or going irregularly should he 
with knowledge and permission of the 
teacher, the same as any other departure 
from regular arrangements. 

Particular directions should be given to 
those who remain, that it may be clearly 
understood what may be done and what 
is not permitted. 

Strict orders with reference to fires, to 
keeping doors shut, etc., in cold weather, 
should be given. There should be respon- 
sibility to some one ; regulations of any 
sort impose obligation, and children should 
know and feel that they are responsible to 
some one to the full extent of whatever 
regulations are made for their direction. 



NOON TIME. 123 

If no better way can be devised, they 
should be responsible to a monitor, who 
should make full report to the teacher. 

If a considerable part of the school 
remain, it is better for the teacher to 
remain, at much sacrifice of personal con- 
venience ; if he must leave for his dinner,, 
he should return as soon as possible and 
before the pupils. 

It should be an invariable rule not to 
leave a company of children by themselves 
without the presence of some older person, 
both for the sake of precaution in case 6i 
accident and for the sake of keeping chil- 
dren within the bounds as to their own 
conduct and their care of school-house and 
property. For this reason the teacher 
comes first in the morning, stays last at 
night, and should, if possible, be on the 
premises at all times when pupils are, not 
for their undue restraint or suspicious 
watching, but for their safety, and to know 
what is going on. 

Some miscellaneous points in reference 
to recess and intermission are worth noting. 



124 THE DAILY K0UTINE. 

The habit of many is to run in and out 
frequently, and for no purpose they could 
state. They come with one and go with 
another, and do not know what they want 
in either case. This habit should be 
broken up. 

The practice of going to a neighbor's 
well "for a drink" is sometimes a great 
annoyance to the neighbor. Either some 
regular way of providing good and fresh 
water to drink should be followed, or a clear 
understanding be had with a neighbor who 
is willing that children should come to his 
well or pump, and a strict enforcement of 
right regulations about it. The same are 
necessary if there is well or pump on the 
premises. 

All manner of trespassing on property in 
vicinity of school-house should be pre- 
vented by measures as strict as may be 
necessary. Climbing fences, or defacing- 
with any marks, or marauding in orchards, 
or picking flowers over or through pickets, 
etc., are now meant. 

The practice of any improper salutation 



DISMISSAL. 125 

or treatment of passers-by must be for- 
bidden. Companies of children out of 
school at play will often do what hardly 
one would think of doing by himself ; for 
example, snow-balling a passer-by or 
"catching a ride" in crowds behind a 
wagon or sleigh. 

AFTERNOON. 

Afternoon school will present the same 
routine as morning school. School is 
called promptly at the time ; all is promptly 
in order ; five minutes are given to busi- 
ness ; classes, recess, classes again, bring to 
the hour of closing. 

CLOSING EXERCISE AND DISMISSAL. 

The programme given provides for a 
brief closing exercise. This may be very 
brief, but it is urged as one not to be 
omitted. It is a good thing for all to 
engage in some exercise which will close 
the day as pleasantly as it was begun. 

Books are put away, all are ready to 
go, and all is in order for dismissal. The 
teacher reads an interesting anecdote, tells 



126 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

the school of something that is going on — ' 
this in case of any important event, might 
be a daily topic for the time — a few 
judicious words on some occurrence of the 
day soothes some irritation or confirms and 
strengthens his own authority ; he tells a 
story or sings a song, if school needs a little 
enlivening ; he may call on one and another 
to recite a scrap of poetry or some '* gem 
of thought," or sometimes, in the right 
school, to repeat verses of scripture ; in one 
or another of a hundred ways the whole 
school, as a school, spend two or three 
minutes before they break up, with an 
effect wholly good, if the teacher is able to 
vary and control such an exercise. 

When it is finished the signal for dis- 
missal is given, and all go quietly and with 
good humor away. There should be free- 
dom when school is out, but order without 
boisterous or rude behavior. Pushing and 
shouting, as if bedlam were let loose, shows, 
again, a feeble teacher. To allow dis- 
missal to be the terror of the neighbor- 
hood, or even to occasion just remark as 



DISMISSAL. 127 

being a scene of noise and tumult, and of 
a surmise what the school must be inside 
which makes such a display outside, is too 
often a very safe standard of judgment 
about all that is done. 

The habit of lingering and dawdling 
about the school-room and about the 
teacher after dismissal is almost as bad as 
the habit of being behind time when school 
opens. It is done by those who want to 
"hang on' f to the teacher, to cultivate 
and expend a kind of maudlin affection, 
and to appropriate the teacher to them- 
selves. This habit is peculiar to a certain 
age and to certain temperaments, and it 
shows a certain weakness and indecision of 
character. Teachers should be careful 
about this, and not allow a certain set of 
either boys or girls to be always hanging 
about them, both for their own sakes and for 
the sakes of the boys and girls. When school 
is dismissed pupils should go home, unless 
for cause. This, of course, is not meant to 
restrain proper intimacy out of school 
between teacher and pupil, but to suggest 



128 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

a caution against a certain kind and mani- 
festation of intimacy. 

School is dismissed and all go away ; all 
hut the teacher. He has records to enter, 
work to put on the board, plans to think of 
for the morrow, a special case of Willie 
Jones or Kitty Sawyer to consider, and 
work for the evening to prepare. He 
should be in the habit of doing all these 
things vigorously and with decision ; and 
when they are done he should turn the key 
in the door with the thought, "Kow the 
cares of school are over for this day ; I 
have these papers to examine, or a set of 
questions to make out, or a map or other 
illustration to draw, but that is definite 
work ; I have done the best I could to-day, 
to-morrow I shall do a little better ; and 
now I throw off this care of school till to- 
morrow brings it back again.'' 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

A few miscellaneous points need a word. 

1. Signals should all be simple and quiet. 
A call-bell lightly struck will serve as well 



MISCELLANEOUS HINTS. 129 

as a clang from the great Tom of Moscow. 
It is a matter of education that a school 
shall hear and obey a sufficient signal, once 
given. The same power which will secure 
attention in class and good lessons will also 
make simple and quiet signals efficient for 
all purposes. Words and motions will do 
as well, if a teacher prefers them ; the 
only difference is in the sense to which 
they are addressed. The point now urged 
is to make every signal mean something 
and to make it heard or seen and obeyed. 
No man can tell another how to do this ; if 
he is able to command in other respects, he 
can in this ; if not, not. 

2. Quiet in walking, moving books, 

etc., is another little thing to be thought of 
in this daily routine. The habit of walking 
heavily, or with shuffling feet, over the 
floors, should be corrected in the hourly 
movement of classes. It may be done 
without any reproach or ridicule, by re- 
peated kind but decided cautions, and on 
the ground that all well bred people avoid 
noisy, careless, shuffling movements, and 



13© THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

that people not well-bred are at once 
known by this. Pupils should not be 
allowed to go about on tip-toe ; that is not 
the way men and women in business and 
society walk ; they should be trained to 
walk lightly as other people walk. The 
same is true of shutting doors as they come 
in, of putting wood into the stove if they 
are told to do that, and of all movements. 

Books should be laid on the desk, not 
slammed down with a bang. The teacher 
will need to be patient and persevering in 
many such little points along with all his 
other work, and not allow the latter to be 
interrupted by almost constant attention to 
the former. 

3. Asking permission of all sorts must 
be regulated, or it will be a source of great 
annoyance, and will foster habits of in- 
attention and uneasiness. As a rule, such 
requests should not be allowed or granted 
during recitation, or, if possible, between 
the five minutes for business and recess. 
They should be indicated by raising the 
hand, or some such sign, and should be 



MISCELLANEOUS HINTS. 131 

recognized or not according to the teacher's 
judgment. But only necessary permissions 
of any kind should be allowed to interrupt 
school. Ability to control these is, again, 
a sign of power in the teacher, while con- 
stant asking of questions is a sign of law- 
less habits and want of control in the pupil. 

4. According to previous suggestions the 
teacher is to see that the school-room is 
neat and clean before school begins ; it is 
the duty of the pupils, under his direction, 
to keep it so during the day. He must see 
that the scraper and the mat are used, that 
torn papers and other litter are not scat- 
tered on the floor. In some schools children 
will need to be instructed that tidiness is a 
school virtue at least, and that muddy shoes 
and dirty hands and slovenly desks are 
things to be corrected in school at least. A 
good way is to make each pupil responsible 
for the appearance of his own desk and the 
floor adjacent, and if any unnecessary dirt 
or litter is found there he must clean it up. 
At the same time, habits of cleanliness and 



132 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

tidiness in everything are to be watchfully 
inculcated. 

5. In many schools it will still be neces- 
sary to keep a look-out against . another 
filthy and injurious habit, that of chewing. 
Oum and tar and rubber are not yet wholly 
banished from schools even, and some 
teachers are yet careless about it and not 
quick to see it. Of course, it is practised 
only by those who do not know any 
physiological reasons against it, and whose 
taste is not offended by its vulgarity. Ac- 
cording to circumstances, it will be best to 
tell a little child quietly to put his quid 
(or "cud") into the stove or basket, or to 
give a more public rebuke to an old offen- 
der, or to explain to the whole school why 
it is injurious and how it is offensive. This 
is one of the few matters in which a little 
good-natured public ridicule may be effec- 
tive. The same attention and care should 
foe directed to eating nuts, popped-corn 
and candies. The requirements of both 
hygiene and school agree in forbidding 
these between meals, and the habit is very 



MISCELLANEOUS HINTS. 133 

largely formed in school, and still more-' 

largely practised, and from school it is 
carried into all public gatherings. 

6. Wardrobes, entries, and other places 
for hanging hats and cloaks afford another 
opportunity for teaching habits of order 
and care of property, which should not be 
neglected. Each pupil should have hi& 
place for putting outside garments, and 
should be required to use it and to have his 
part in as good order as his part of the 
school- room. A tumbled-up entry or 
wardrobe is generally an index of a dis- 
orderly school in other respects, and these 
places will generally be disorderly unless 
the teacher makes it part of his daily care 
to inspect and regulate them. 

7. This daily routine will require one 
thing more, constant oversight of school 
property. Desks and other furniture will 
need frequent inspection. Knives and 
pencils and other instruments common to 
all boys' pockets will work mischief on the 
best furniture, unless their owners are 
restrained by something more on the alert 



134 THE DAILY ROUTINE. 

than an ordinary prtpil's respect for good 
furniture. Library books, apparatus, com- 
mon school conveniences, such as black- 
boards, are exposed and are liable, to the 
same injurious use, if not protected. 

And there need be no apology for saying 
plainly that out-buildings must also be in- 
cluded in the same vigilant care that every- 
thing is put to its right use, and to this use 
only. There should be no scruple about 
the plainest talk on the decencies of the 
out-houses, and no hesitation in enforcing 
the most rigid examination and require- 
ments about their use. And if all these 
things add greatly to the burden and labor 
of this daily routine, it is burden and labor 
that cannot be shirked under any pretext. 

One day's routine is very much like an- 
other ; if it is not carried out with constant 
thought and constant desire of improve- 
ment, it soon becomes frightful drudgery \ 
but the young teacher needs to keep in 
mind the fact that the efficiency of his 
teaching and the consequent value of the 
school, as well as its apparent discipline 



MISCELLANEOUS HOTTS. 135 

to any observer, depend largely upon vigor- 
ous and steady management of its daily 
routine. He need not become merely a drill- 
master, or spend his energy in devising 
fresh manoeuvres for his school to execute, 
but he must hold his school in hand and 
order all its movements with a power 
which is never felt to be irksome while it 
never allows any detail to be at loose ends. 



CHAPTER VII. 



GENERAL EXERCISES. 

By these are meant those exercises in 
which the school as a whole may engage. 
Of course, in a mixed school the beginners 
may be considered as outside, but all the 
rest may take part. For one recitation 
period a day the school may be a class 
doing, as well as each one can, the same 
work. What is the advantage of such an 
arrangement ? 

Any classification of a school which can 
be made is based, for the most part, on 
progress in certain branches of technical 
knowledge, and is in order that the same 
lesson from the books used, or the same 
work aside from books, may be assigned to 
a number of pupils. It is for the sake of 
formal, progressive work, each part of 



GENERAL EXERCISES. 137 

which depends on the preceding, that such 
classification is made. It is a necessary 
division of a school, but it is, at best, a 
somewhat arbitrary and levelling process ; 
to make it possible, pupils have to be 
stretched, or trimmed, or hampered, for 
otherwise the course cannot be maintained 
or the classes or grades regularly advanced. 
This may be best in some subjects ; at any 
rate, it seems necessary in practice. But 
in other directions the child may and 
should be allowed to work more freely ; in 
some things the younger may work with 
the older, though not in ciphering and 
parsing. All can gather flowers for lessons 
in Botany, or rocks for specimens in 
Geology, or bugs for samples in Natural 
History. To confine an active, inquiring 
child to set lessons with his class is very 
often to stunt his intellectual growth. In 
other words, while it is necessary in some 
things to put him on a track and keep him 
there and judge him by the milestones he 
passes, in other things he should learn to 
investigate for himself and be allowed to 



10 



138 GENERAL EXERCISES. 

do all lie can, and within limits as he 
pleases. Reading, perhaps, is the best 
single illustration of this. Reading in 
school is mainly occupied with learning to 
call words and to give emphasis and slides 
and pauses correctly, and this is necessary, 
and as far as it goes, useful. But what do 
children learn to read for, if not, as 
Hugh Miller did, to find stories for 
themselves in books ? And yet how many 
do not, as the result of any school instruc- 
tion, ever get beyond the idea that reading 
is a drill, repeated to weariness and dis- 
gust, of certain scraps in books called the 
third reader or the fourth reader, " only 
that and nothing more ! " The reading 
class is necessary for this drill, but as fast 
as the child learns to read, he should — reacts 
and read, as a rule and with proper advice, 
what he likes to read. 

Again; class instruction is too much 
hook instruction ; the best teachers, with 
many classes to hear and but short time for 
each, almost of necessity confine themselves 
pretty closely to the text they follow, and 



SUGGESTIONS. 139 

recitations tend to become rote -work. Oral 
instruction, carefully prepared and made a 
stimulus to more study, not an excuse for 
less study, is good for all, and often gives 
the teacher his best opportunity of awaken- 
ing and instructing his pupils. There is 
not space to discuss the value or the man- 
ner of this mode of instruction, but that it 
should be used to some extent in all schools 
will be generally admitted. 

Again ; a general exercise gives the 
opportunity of teaching at least a little of 
some subjects for which there is no time 
otherwise. A small class could, of course, 
recite in the period allotted to the whole 
school, but all could not be divided into 
classes in these subjects, and they are as 
useful and necessary for one as for another. 

Once again ; a general exercise in which 
all the school are on equality, and each 
may learn what he can, and contribute 
what he can, is a pleasant and invigorating 
exercise for both teacher and pupil. Prob- 
ably in no other way can a greater zest be 
given to study in its best form than in this 



140 GENERAL EXERCISES. 

way. It must not be at the expense of set 
lessons ; these in all their vigor are needed 
that this general lesson may be at its best ; 
but as an auxiliary to study for class and as 
a diffusive tonic, it may be as interesting 
as it is useful. 

For these four reasons, then, viz., to 
enlarge the range of the pupil's activity, 
to get once a day the full benefit of oral 
instruction, to bring in some subjects not 
otherwise possible, to enliven and interest 
all, a daily general exercise is recommended. 

What should be the subject or subjects of 
such an exercise? This will depend, in 
part, on the needs or capacities of the 
pupils and knowledge of the teacher. If 
other time cannot be found, however, for 
language or composition exercises, or for 
history and government, this time should 
be taken. For a school of little children 
in summer, Botany is a delightful and 
instructive subject. For an older school 
some branch of Natural Philosophy, or 
some part of Chemistry may be more 



SUBJECTS. 141 

appropriate, while for still another some 
branch of Natural History may be best. 
A knowledge, be it ever so little, of good 
books and authors, so rarely taken away 
from the common school, would be a 
valuable possession. This would be a diffi- 
cult subject for most teachers to make in- 
teresting to most scholars, but it would 
sometimes be worth a trial. The same is 
true of a knowledge of current events. 
Sometimes, again, the best subject might 
be an extension of some ordinary class 
subject ; e. g., if the geography classes can 
have only the descriptive part found in 
their books, they and the rest of the pupils 
might have their ideas enlarged by a little 
physical or comparative geography ; the 
arithmetic lessons might furnish any num- 
ber of useful and practical applications to 
piles of wood, plastering of walls, carpets 
for floors, reckoning of interest, etc. It 
would not be necessary to confine the exer- 
cises to one subject for the term ; while 
they should aim to make some definite and 
useful point and not waste themselves in 



142 GENERAL EXEECISES. 

mere desultory and entertaining trifles, the 
topics may be changed as often as is best 
with reference to the real end in view, 
which is, in general, the supplementing of 
daily lessons with what will extend and 
make them more significant and practical. 
But great care must be taken not to refer 
any proper and regular school work to this 
waste-basket of a general exercise, for such 
it may become, if not, like every other 
exercise in school, held strictly to its own 
use. 

What should be the manner of this 
exercise? Briefly this. The teacher lays 
out for himself the work he would like to 
do in fifteen minutes a day for so many 
weeks. He may present it to the school 
in the form of experiments to be watched 
and then repeated by pupils, or of topics 
with divisions for questioning friends about 
or looking up in books, or of work to be 
done with material to be collected, or of 
questions to be answered, or of direct 
object lessons, or of familiar talk, — not 
lectures — while pupils are learning the use- 



BOTANY. 143 

ful art of taking notes. The manner will 
depend on the school, the subject, and the 
teacher, but it should aim to make some 
definite point in each lesson, to keep 
pupils' minds active and inquiring, and to 
set them on the search for themselves. 
One illustration will suffice, that of a 
teacher in her first summer school, who 
desires to teach little children something 
about Botany, beside the reading, spelling 
and numbers. She must know a little 
Botany herself to begin with, and must be 
familiar with common flowers. She will 
need some simple manual as a guide and 
help, say Miss Youman's Botany for Be- 
ginners. She will instruct the children to 
collect materials — leaves, buds, flowers — 
and with those before her will call the 
attention of all her school to veins, petals, 
stems and leaves, roots, etc., explaining, 
making drawings on the board and asking 
children ■ to do the same with pencils, get- 
ting little daily written exercises — the very 
best kind of compositions — telling what 
new thing was learned in the lesson ; and 



144 GENERAL EXERCISES. 

so bit by bit children acquire a delightful in- 
terest in plants, from which they will some- 
time go on to Botany as a Science, while 
at the same time they will learn to love 
school and all manner of learning. 

Another school and teacher will do the 
same, with the same results, with the 
mechanical powers, or minerals, or insects, 
or the principles and working of republican 
government. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



TO THE YOUNG TEACHER DIRECTLY. 

It is no light task you are undertaking, 
nor can it be well done in any trifling or 
inconsiderate spirit. You are entering 
upon a work which has engaged the wis- 
dom of the wisest and the endeavors of the 
best of all ages. Whether regarded in 
itself, as a work requiring the highest skill 
and the most careful preparation, or in its 
effect on others, moulding, as it does, both 
their opinions and their characters, it is 
enough to engage all your powers even as 
you cross its very threshold, and to make 
you more and more thoughtful every day. 

It is, also, one of the most useful and 
most fruitful of all the occupations of men. 
You can see its fruits from day to day in 
your school-rooms, and you can see what 



146 TO THE YOUNG TEACHER. 

men and women in the community about 
you it lias helped to make. E"o other labor, 
probably, produces so immediate and so 
continual a harvest of good results, if it is 
faithfully done, as teaching does. 

Further than this, it is one of the most 
serious of all forms of work. They who 
assume it assume a grave resposibility, for 
it is not even the most precious form of 
matter which they beautify or deface, but 
it is little children, whose future lives they 
make or mar by their work. The blessing 
of those who have been well taught and 
well guided in youth is a rich heritage to 
those who deserve it, while no curse is more 
blighting to those who have earned it, than 
to be conscious or to be told of false 
guidance and wrong instruction in youth. 

Therefore, it is with all earnestness urged 
upon you to undertake it, only with some 
sense of its responsibility and such fore- 
thought of its result as is now possible. If 
you are not able or willing to pay your 
part of the cost of preparation, do not 
enter upon it, even for a little time, un- 



GOD SPEED ! 147 

prepared. Bring to it at least a creditable 
outfit and a serious purpose ; devote to it 
all your acquirements and your best 
thoughts ; work with some plan, toward 
some definite end, and work with your 
m. ight ! When its daily details threaten 
to make drudgery of all you do, reassure 
yourself by thinking of its certain results,, 
and work on in faith and hope, for such work 
in the school-room cannot fail to bear fruit, 
Be ambitious to master the art of teaching 
both in its fundamental principles and its 
minutest points of ordinary routine. Study 
and learn ; again I say, study and learn / 
evermore, study and learn y and may Grod 
speed all who in this spirit are beginning 
to teach ! 



INDEX. 



Acquisition of knowledge, its part in education. . 33 

Active and moral powers of children 15 

Active exercises in middle of sessions 91 

Adaptation of instruction to the pupil 18 

Advice to the young teacher 145 

./Esthetic sense in children 16 

Afternoon session 125 

After school, work for the teacher 128 

Age of teachers 21 

Algebra, shall it be taught? 73 

Ail should go home after school 126 

Arithmetic . 76, 77, 86, 92 

Asking permission to be regulated 130 

Attendance, record of 105 

Before school, must there be order?. 103 

Beginning 62 

Bible in school, shall it be read? 107 

Boarding-place important . 54 

Botany 137, 140, 143 

Boys and girls may be seated together 96 

the problem of recesses 115 

should not teach school 21 

Bunch the pupils together 85 

Business mottoes apply in school 102 

Busy pupils are out of mischief 64 

"Catching a ride" -_.125 

Change of occupation should be frequent 91 

Character, mature and developed, requisite 22 

Chewing gum, rubber, etc., forbidden 132 



INDEX. 149 

Children, knowledge of required 13 

should not be confined to class- work. -137 
should not he educated in presence of 

feebleness or deformity 26 

Civil Government 75, 81 

Classes, arrangement of 76, 82 

often the teacher's greatest difficulty 84 

calling and dismissing 110 

management of 46 

should be as few as possible .68, 71, 85 

should be not less than 15 minutes 72, 84, 87 

Classification, general principles 67 

based on examination.. 68 

Cleanliness in building insisted upon 55, 131 

Closing exercises 125 

Collateral subjects, knowledge 'of essential 10 

Composition 81 , 143 

Contract, should be distinct 51 

and faithfully kept 53 

Daily routine of school 101 

Discipline, mental, its part in education 34 

moral, a secondary consideration. 36, 46 

its significance and value 39 

Dismissal 125 

Division of time 69 

Drafts of air a consideration in seating 98 

Drawing 75, 81, 91 

Education, what it is 14, 30 

special province of the school " 32 

Enrolment 66 

Equipment of materials for school and study. . . 60 

Exercises at opening and closing 106 

Family antipathies sometimes to be considered.. 98 

Feet of pupils must not swing. ., 98 

Fidelity to the work undertaken 4S 

First day's work 88, 90 

Freedom of intercourse desirable 104 

Games allowed at recess 116, 121 

General directions to be given at opening 109 



150 INDEX. 

General exercises 106, 108, 126, 136, 139, 142 

General information needed 10 

Geography 78, 141 

Graded schools 88 

Grammar 78, 92 

Habits, right habits to be enforced 35, 125 

Health a prime requisite in teacher 25, 61 

History 75, 81 

Hugh Miller 138 

Ideal always to be kept in view 41, 44, 47, 50 

Intellectual powers in children 16 

training 33 

Intelligence not all from text books 11 

Intimacy between teacher and pupils 127 

Knowledge a teacher needs 10 

Language 81 

Lessons, how, when, why presented 19 

License, teacher's 13, 53 

Little children, recitations for 83 

should not be placed on seats too 

high ..-- 97 

Love of knowledge an aim in education 35 

Manhood the aim of education 31 

Management of classes 46 

Manner of general exercises. . .. 142 

Materials for school and study 60 

Maudlin intimacy to be discouraged 127 

Mental arithmetic best taught with written 86 

Method of study to be taught 35 

Methods of teaching, important. _ 45 

Model, another school accepted for 43 

Monday morning 62 

Moral powers of children 15 

Morning session 109 

Natural Science, shall it be taught ? 

73, 82, 140, 141, 143 

Neighbors must not be annoyed 117, 124 

Noise at recess, how much allowed? 117 

Noon time - - 120 



INDEX. 151 

Normal training, is it a necessity? 19 

•Observation often better than study and practice 60 

Opening of school . 62, 106, 125 

Oral instruction 139 

Order before school 103 

of recitations 46 

Outbuildings, care of 113, 134 

Outfiit for teaching 9 

Outside employment and amusement .23, 48 

Oversight of school property required 133 

Penmanship 80 

Physiology, shall it be taught ? 73 

Physical being of children 15 

Plan of work in school 29, 40, 41 

Play at noon better than study 121 

Preliminaries, minor 51 

Programme of the day 71, 91, 93 

arranged to relieve both pupil and 

teacher 92 

for study as well as recitation 93 

Quantity of work laid out to be done 47 

Questions for the young teacher 20 

Quietness essential 129 

Reading .. 78, 85, 91, 138 

Recesses. 112 

should all be compelled to stay out? 114 

Recitations, order of 46, 92 

should alternate with study periods. 91 

Record of attendance 105 

Rudiments must come first 74 

Running out and in purposelessly. 124 

School, preliminary acquaintance desirable.. 56 

training should not transcend its province 37 

what it requires and what it allows 49 

work, how made most effective 37 

School-house must always be in responsible care 

122, 123 

should be ready before term opens 

55, 131 

should never be a place of disorder. 102 



152 INDEX. 

School-property to be carefully kept •_ . _ : 133 

Seating of pupils an important matter __ 95 

should he under teacher's recognized 

control 96 

Signals. 105, 110, 128 

Snow-balling 125 

Speech-making at opening not recommended 62 

Spelling : . 79 

State certificate, should be the minimum sought. . 13 
Staying at noon to be under teacher's direction. .122 

Subjects to be taught 72 

Supplementary reading 86 

Teacher may be required to remain at noon 123 

should be a leader 12 

Teacher's license 53 

"license not itself enough 13 

Teaching, importance and responsibility 145 

must it be for life ? __-_-. 27 

requires special natural fitness 23 

Temperament of pupils observed 99 

Text-books, knowledge outside of required. .12, 138 

Tidiness a school virtue 131 

Time lost in getting into order 119 

Tip-toe, walking on to be avoided 130 

Training mental powers, its part 34 

Ventilation of the school-house 115, 121 

Visiting other scho- Is profitable. . 58 

Vocal gjnimastics 91 

Walking on tip-toe unnatural 130 

Wardrobes should be kept in order 133 

Water, how obtained for drinking 124 



^/? 

j^ X 



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